


I know it now

by AlisaRB



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Alternate Universe - Nursing Home, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Nurses & Nursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 06:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 60,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3757090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlisaRB/pseuds/AlisaRB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth works as a nurse in residence Rosewood, and she's one of the very few people who Mrs. Dixon seems to tolerate, but when the management threatens to expell the old woman if her behavior doesn't improve, Beth starts looking for her relatives and runs into Daryl Dixon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kin

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Ahora lo sé](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3732010) by [AlisaRB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlisaRB/pseuds/AlisaRB). 



> I've been thinking about this idea for a very long time. What if Daryl's mom have never died? What if the apocalypse have never occurred, and she had run into Beth? What if...?  
> Well, you'll have to read to know.

Beth was blowing absently at her coffee while she watched the elderly playing cards sitting at a table. She felt a cold draft running through her and she huddled even more in her knitted cardigan, bringing the cup to her lips to take a little sip. She wrinkled her nose at the feeling of the lava running down her throat.

“You’re here” she heard a voice behind her. She turned around and saw Rosita bent over the counter, looking at her coffee with desire, “Where did you find it? The coffee machine is broken”.

“I always bring a thermos from my home” Beth explained, turning again to go into the small office and taking the recipient from her bag.

“I love you” Rosita said, bringing a cup to Beth so she could pour the dark liquid. The woman licked her lips when she felt the smell invading the room, “There’s nothing better for cold than this”.

Beth smiled.

“But I wished we could have heating. We have a chimney and we don’t use it”.

“It doesn’t swallow the smoke how it should” Beth explained, “They will all end up choking”.

“Talking about elderly” Rosita said suddenly, leaving the cup on the counter and crouching down to dim through archives, “I need you to go to see Mrs. Dixon”

“What happened?”

“What happened was the usual. Last night she had one of her nervous breakdown again and we had to sedate her, but this morning she was already nervous. She doesn’t let anyone else to come close. If you could go and stay a while with her…”

“Sure” Beth immediately answered, before she dropped her coffee cup beside Rosita’s and getting out of the office, “I’ll see you later!”

“Ciao” said Rosita, winking at her.

Beth hurried in go the distance that there was to the rooms of the elderly. When she got to room 412, she knocked softly and half opened the door, poking her head through the doorway:

“Good morning misses Dixon” she murmured, smiling, “Can I come in?”

The old lady was lying on the bed, with her head turned to the window and her arms full of IV’s for which were probably being injected tranquilizers. Most of the times she didn’t even hear her, medicated as she was, and Beth just simply came in to help her cleaning up or taking her to the dining room. However, that time she turned her head and glanced at her before she nodded.

Beth came in and closed the door behind her, coming closer to her bed.

“How are you feeling this morning, Mrs. Dixon?”

“Mm…”

“I’ll replace your pillows so you’ll be more comfortable, alright?” she lifted her up slightly while she helped the old lady to move, “That’s it, careful. That’s it”.

Beth covered her with the sheets again and then brought a chair that was beside the bed even closer to it, sitting by her side.

“Today’s a beautiful day. Have you seen it?” she said, pointing to the window, “What about we put you in a wheel chair and we go for a walk?”

The old woman didn’t answer, and despite Beth expected it, it didn’t lessened the disappointment she felt every time the elderly ignored her or refused to do something. There were days when she seemed less reluctant to agree and was even able to try and walk by herself to the living room or eat anything, but most times –like that- the old lady was so caught up in her own world that she seemed unable to do even the easiest of the activities.

 

No one in the nursery home knew what had happened to the unfortunate. The woman had arrived after falling off a window of her home and breaking several bones. The AMT said that it had been almost impossible to get her on the ambulance, nervous as she was. The only thing that she wanted was to go back inside, but she couldn’t move without screaming in pain. After two weeks in intensive care, finally she was brought to Rosewood. It was a public nursery home, with barely any resources or grants, but at least they had a bed for her and people who worried that she wouldn’t fall again from a second floor.

 

At the beginning it had been so difficult to come close to her in any way, even with something as simple as trying to help her getting up, that some of the auxiliaries had nicknamed her “the beast”. Beth thought that it was anything but funny. It was obvious that the lady hadn’t had an easy life if she was that distrustful. Besides, every time Beth looked in her eyes, that penetrating blue eyes she had, Beth was invaded by the feeling that maybe, behind that dazed gaze there was hidden more than one story that she was willing to hear.

 

So she kept going visiting her every day, taking care of her personally. It wasn’t especially difficult having her shifts changed to take care of “the beast”, but it was getting her out of her shell, especially when she had these nervous breakdowns when there wasn’t any way to calm her down except for medication. But little by little she was getting her to get out of that fort that had created and started sharing parts of her past with her. They weren’t really momentous things, but rather little details, like that her favorite flowers were daisies, that her favorite tobacco brand was Camel or that there wasn’t anything that she liked more than those old pin-up magazines.

Beth was going from one place to another of the room, trying to put nicely the flowers of the jar, opening more the curtains and trying to put everything in order, so focused on her job that she needed a few seconds to realize that the old lady was calling her.

“Sorry, Mrs. Dixon” she apologized, “What were you saying?”

“Sing, Beth” she begged in a small voice, “Sing a bit, today’s cold…”

Sometimes Beth wondered if she really understood that what she was saying didn’t make any sense, but she definitely wasn’t going to make any comments about it. Instead, she approached her bed and smiled.

“Of course” she assured, taking her hand in hers softly. To her surprise, the old woman didn’t flinch. Beth held her gaze while she sung quietly:

 

_Every man has a right to live,_

_Love is all that we have to give_

_Together we struggle by our will to survive_

_And together we fight just to stay alive_

_Struggling man has got to move_

_Struggling man, no time to lose_

_I’m a struggling man_

_And I’ve got to move on_

_. . ._

And while the old woman nodded her head softly to the beat of her voice, with her eyes closed and a soft smile on her chapped lips, Beth reaffirmed over and over again on why she had decided to start working in Rosewood. Just for things like that. Just to see people like Mrs. Dixon in peace for a few minutes.

 

* * *

 

 

Beth occupied a sit next to Rosita and Lori in one of the tables on the break room.

“It’s the fifth cup today and it’s just lunch time” Lori complained while she looked at her coffee.

“Yeah, today’s has been a hectic day” Rosita agreed, burying her face in her hands. Suddenly, she raised her head, like she just had remembered something. Rosita used to do that frequently, from what Beth had seen, “Do you know what doctors were talking about today?”

“You shouldn’t hear private conversations” Lori scolded her affectionately. Rosita frown, but she kept talking nevertheless.

“This is important, Lori. They’re thinking about expelling Mrs. Dixon”.

“What? Why?” Lori asked, worry evident in her voice.

Beth raised her head from her sandwich so fast that her neck hurt, but in those moments she wasn’t so self-conscious to realize.

“Apparently they’re tired of her deliriums, and it seems like yesterday was the straw that breaks the camel” Rosita leaned in before she lowered her voice, “Doctor Jensen tried to get her in bed and she screamed him some not very nice things before she scratched his whole face”.

“That was her?” Beth intervened. That morning, when she saw the reddish line extending across his cheek, she had wondered if maybe he had an unruly cat. However, she didn’t dare to ask. Doctor Jensen was almost as old as is patients, and he was, with no doubt, the most unfriendly man Beth had ever met. It didn’t matter how much she tried to be polite, how much she smiled and tried to make him twitch a little bit the corners of his mouth, he always kept that expression of immutable severity.

Rosita nodded.

“He got so mad at her that he almost lost his temper. After they sedated her, he went straight to the nursery management and told them that he wouldn’t keep working in those conditions. Alexis and Frank swear that the screams could be heard from the entry” Rosita giggled. She hated Doctor Jensen with especially intensity.

“Poor woman” Lori sighed, “It’s like they don’t realize that she’s a person. What are they going to do, throw her to the street like she was a dog?”

“I don’t know” her colleague shrugged, “I guess they’ll deliberate and take a decision, but unless she changes her behavior, I doubt they’ll allow her stay. They’ll probably send her to Versan”.

“What do you say?” Beth exclaimed, “But that place is awful”.

“Helen worked there for a while. She says they had to heat the water in pans ‘cause there wasn’t running water”, Rosita commented.

Beth’s eyes widened, horrified.

“We have to do something” she said. Her partners looked at her and sighed.

“Sweetheart, I’m afraid we can’t do much” Lori took her hand gently, trying to support her, “I know you really appreciate her, but it’s not our call. No one wants to take care of her, and she has no one to look after her. They won’t waste her money on someone who gives them more troubles” she added bitterly.

“And what if there was a relative?” Beth said suddenly, like a bulb had lighted in her mind, “Someone who could come and spend time with her, who could look after her. I’m sure management would notice that. And she’d be calmer, much better”.

“And where are you going to find them?” Rosita asked, “You were here when AMT’s came. There was no one in her house, and the two months that followed while she was at the hospital, no one picked up the phone when they called. I don’t think she has nobody”.

“But, what if I found them?” Beth insisted. Lori sighed.

“Then I guess you could try and put off all this a little bit more, but that doesn’t mean that…” but Beth had already stood up, going back in a hurry to room 412.

 

Mrs. Dixon was staring at the ceiling, with those unexpressive eyes of her. Beth knocked softly on the door, but that time she didn’t wait for her permission to come in.

“Ma’am” she started, “I need to talk to you”.

The woman didn’t answer, but she did the slightest gesture to note that she had heard her. Beth approached her bed immediately.

“We need to speak about your family” she said directly, without beat about the bush. She didn’t respond, but from the way her shoulders tensed, Beth knew she had heard that too, “It’s important”.

Beth stayed quiet a few seconds, waiting for an answer. She sighed, almost desperate.

“Listen, please, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Are you married? Do you have a husband?”

“No husband, no husband, no husband” she started saying, jerking her head too sharply for her own good. Beth held her carefully by her shoulders to try to calm her down.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, everything’s okay” Beth assured her. She stayed like that until old woman’s shoulder stop trembling, and then she dropped her hands to her sides, conscious of how little the old lady liked to be touched, “Siblings? Do you have any brothers of sister with whom you had contact?” the woman took a little bit more time, but she finally shook her head, “Children? Do you have children?”

Beth didn’t really expect her to respond. Mrs. Dixon stared at that water-stained ceiling for several minutes, almost as if she was on shock, before her lips opened slightly. She said it so quietly the first time that Beth didn’t even understand her at the beginning, but then she got it.

“You said the drawer? Do you mean this drawer, Mrs. Dixon?” Beth asked, signaling to the nightstand beside her bed. She didn’t reply, and then Beth opened the first drawer. She found an old metallic box, which had contained butter cookies once. She held it in her hands, and when she saw Mrs. Dixon didn’t react in any way, she opened it.

Inside it there were lots of photos. Some of them had a faded color; others were black on white, but all of them with date and some note below. Beth started watching them one by one, until she finally got to the more recent ones. She stopped in the penultimate picture, which put apart from the rest and held in front of the old lady.

“These are your children, Mrs. Dixon? Merle and Daryl?” she asked.

“My children” the old lady muttered, turning slightly her head towards the picture. She raised a trembling hand and took the photo, “My babies”.

“Do you know where they are?” Maybe I could call them so they could visit you. Would you like it?”

The woman raised her glaze to look at her, like she was gone again. She shook once.

“Far” she just said. Beth wanted to whine of frustration. She took the picture carefully from the wrinkled fingers of the old woman and observed the photography. There was a woman in it –Mrs. Dixon, Beth guessed- in her middle thirties, and two boys. The older one, who was around ten, looked at the camera with a serious expression, while the younger one, who Beth supposed wasn’t more than three, had his fist buried in his mouth, resting her head against his mother’s chest. Beth felt like her heart was breaking. It wasn’t the first or the last habitant in that nursing home whom children never appeared, but with her that was especially painful, because the only thing Mrs. Dixon was able to say now was “my babies” in a low voice, in such an anguish tone that Beth felt her eyes watery.

“I’ll find your sons, Mrs. Dixon” Beth promised her.

 

* * *

Beth spent the next two days running around from one place to another, looking for information numbers, asking anyone who could know where Merle and Daryl Dixon were. She skipped her breaks for lunch to go searching in the registers, to ask in any business, to Dixon’s neighbors. She soon discovered that the most she would ever get from them was a place to buy drugs, and she desisted in that clue.

 

She had just learned that the management was going to communicate Mrs. Dixon that it would be better if she was transferred to another nursing home –like she had a _choice_ \- when she received a call in the middle of a break.

“Beth!” Alexis called her from reception, “It’s for you!”

Beth hurried to pick up the phone.

“Hello?” she answered, almost distressingly.

“Beth?” she recognized official Walsh’s voice. Shane was one of the cops of the town, and together with Rick, good friends of his father. She had known him for years and he had always been kind to her, “Why are you asking for the Dixon?”

“Do you know them?” she asked, excited.

“Of course I know them, Beth. In the police station they’re already celebrities”, he snorted, “But I don’t get why you look for them. They’re bad news, Beth”.

“They can’t be that bad” she protested weakly.

“I’ve arrested Merle Dixon several times, I think I know what I’m talking about” Shane retorted.

“So that you know where they are” Beth countered.

“I… God” he sighed, “I didn’t say that”.

“But you do know”.

“Beth, don’t get involved with these people” his tone was severe now; “I don’t want to feel obligated to talk with your dad”.

Now the one who wanted to snort was her. She was twenty-three, for God’s sake. She wanted to point out that she wasn’t thirteen anymore, but since Shane was the only person who could lead her to the Dixon; she couldn’t risk to lose that clue.

“Her mother is a patient here. They want to transfer her to Versan, Shane. I can’t let that happen to her”, her voice wavered, “Please, I need to find them”.

“What can they do anyway?”

“Maybe if… if they come here and be with here and the management realizes that she’s not going to cause any more trouble they’ll let her stay”.

Shane snorted again.

“If what you’re looking for is someone as a good influence for a senile old, you’re looking for the wrong people” Shane answered, with a humorless tone.

“ _Please_ ” Beth begged, without caring anymore to look totally desperate. She really was. She waited some seconds in silence, praying for her insides, until she heard him sigh.

“I didn’t tell you anything, Beth. You hear me? Anything” he gibbered, and Beth had to suppress herself to not giggle of joy, “Take note”.

Beth looked for a pen in her blouse’s pocket and started writing in a post-it the number Shane was dictating her at full speed.

“I’ve got it” she muttered with a triumphal tone, giving a final tap with the pen tip to the paper, “Thanks Shane, I owe you one”.

“It’s nothing, Beth” he answered, “But, hey”.

“Yes?”

“Be careful with these people”.

“I’ll be” she assured him, smiling of pure happiness. She hung up the phone and decided to mark the number phone that she had in front of her, but then the damn Doctor Jensen came and started scolding and asking her if she “didn’t have anything to do”.

 

Hours later, when she had got home, she let herself drop into the couch, burying herself in the softness of the cushions. She was about to close her eyes and take a five-minutes nap before she showered and had dinner when she realized that a paper had dropped from her pocket. Then she remembered all of a sudden and she got up quickly to get the phone.

Her heart was pounding while she marked keys, and she feared that her heart would go out of her chest when she heard the first rings of the call. It just needed to ring twice until someone picked it up.

“Hello?” it was a husky and deep voice, and it gave her goose bumps, “Who is it?”

Beth swallowed hard and inhaled deeply.

“Hi” she managed to say, “Merle Dixon?”

“Daryl” the voice answered, “Who’s this?”

“I’m-I’m Beth Greene. I work in the nursing home Rosewood nursing home, next to…”

“I know where it is” the voice cut her sharply. Beth congratulated herself for being such an idiot. Of course he knew. It wasn’t like Newborn was a place especially big.

“I take care of your mother” she said hurriedly, “There was a problem and…”

“I can’t help you” he interrupted her rudely. Beth was momentarily speechless from the tone of his words.

“Sorry, I think I haven’t explained myself correctly. Your mom has been having behavior problems and we thought that maybe…”

“Where did you get this number from?” he cut her again. Beth was losing her patience, but she inhaled deeply and tried to maintain calmed.

“It’s a small town” she just said, “Now, if you could help me…”

“I just said I can’t do anything. You deaf?” he barked, and Beth felt then like she was on fire.

“Listen, Mr. Dixon, I don’t know what problems you could have with your mom, but she’s still your mom. They’re about to transfer her and she doesn’t even realize what happens around her, but she remembers you and your brother and she keeps asking for you. She has a family which hasn’t helped her in all this time, but I don’t care what happened in the past, _now_ she needs you!” she snapped. She cut herself immediately when she realized that she had spoken too much. She was practically panting because of the irritation, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he hung up the phone. A complete stranger had just given him what was probably the lecture of his life about his personal issues and he had the whole right in the world to send her to hell.

However, when a couple of minutes had passed and she hadn’t got any response yet, Beth steeled and talked again.

“Mr. Dixon, you there?”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked quickly, in a much lower voice than before. Beth felt secretly proud of being able to placate a bit of his bad temper.

“You could be with her, make her company. I can’t be with her all day and I don’t like her being alone. You don’t have to talk much, she’s usually medicated” she explained, a little more calmed.

“There aren’t nurses to take care of her?”

“As I said” she started, “your mom has had some… behavior problems. It’s not like there are lots of nurses willing to take care of her. That’s why I thought that maybe, if she saw some familiar faces, her state would improve”.

Daryl stayed silent a few seconds more.

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon suits you? At five o’clock?” she heard a grunt that she interpreted as a ‘yes, five is okay’, “We’ll see tomorrow then. Goodbye, Mr. Dixon”.

She wasn’t surprised when the call ended and he hadn’t said goodbye. It wasn’t like he had been exactly charming during their conversation, but at least he had accepted to go, and that was a huge step forward.

Beth leaned further into the back of the sofa and took the old photo of her pocket, running her thumb over the baby’s face.

“What happened to you? She asked out loud.


	2. Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth, Mrs. Dixon and a broken boiler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love writing this story and I hope you love it as much as I do.  
> I want to thank my beautiful friend Jen who always supported me and edited this chapter for me since I'm not an expert translator. You're awesome and this story is totally dedicated to you :)  
> Enjoy!

Beth spent the rest of the day looking nervously at the clock in the common room. She had never been the type of person that snaps and is mean to anyone: that wasn’t the way she had been raised, and especially wasn’t her character. However, that man seemed to have the ability to get on her nerves. Beth had been taught to never make assumptions about someone, especially if she barely knew them, and based on that, she should had bitten her tongue when she had talked with mister Dixon. She _did_ know Mrs. Dixon, though, or at least, that was what she wanted to believe. And every day, when she smiled the slightest or seemed to be more animated, Beth couldn’t help but wonder who could be so cruel to left behind someone so hurt, as if she was a burden.

 

Finally, after walking around the nursing home, the clock struck five o’clock, and practically in that instant, the door opened. In that moment Beth was bent down, looking for the file of one of the residents with the spoon of her yogurt in her mouth, and when she stood up she hit her head with on side of the counter. She hissed in pain and when she stuck up, rubbing her head with one hand and holding the spoon with the other, she saw a man entirely dressed on black looking at her with a frown. Beth flushed suddenly, her eyes wide. That man was attractive. No. He was _gorgeous._ He was the kind of man who Lori and Rosita would stare at as soon as he turned around. He had long, dark hair which slightly hid his eyes, but that didn’t stop the feeling of those blue daggers piercing her.

She blinked, and realizing that she should do something, she dropped the spoon on the counter and cleared her throat, trying to recover some of her professionalism (and dignity):

“Hello!” she said, bringing a smile to her face, “Mr. Dixon?”

He nodded, but stayed silent. Beth exited the office and approached him to give him a quick and firm handshake. She was surprised to feel that, even though he had rough and calloused hands, he didn’t have an unpleasant feel at all. She withdrew her hand immediately, mortified by the thoughts that she was having in that moment and she hurried to change the direction of her ramblings to avoid the blush that was seizing her face again.

“This way, please” she said, gesturing to the aisles that leaded to the rooms. The man didn’t say anything, but Beth heard his footsteps cushioned in the carpet, following her. She swallowed, angry with herself for feeling so shy suddenly, and she almost made a mistake and knocked in the wrong door.

 _Calm down_ , she said to herself.

She knocked softly on room 412’s door and stuck the head out the door, as always.

“Mrs. Dixon?” she said, smiling, “I brought you a surprise”.

She opened the door slowly before she gestured Daryl to come in. The man stared at her for a few moments before he obeyed, and once they were both inside, Beth stood there, not knowing what to do. Should she stay, should she leave? A part of her, the sensible one, screamed her to leave, that she had nothing to do there, but she felt unable to unpin her feet and turn around, so she stayed in the entry, observing the scene.

 

Daryl wasn’t a very tall man, but he occupied much of the space of the small room. Besides, his aspect contrasted greatly with the clarity of the room. Beth looked at his vest, with the draw of two wings in its back. She wondered if he belonged to some bikers club. If Shane was telling the truth –and the agent had no reason to lie to her- he probably was.

Then, he turned around and gazed at her intently, and Beth felt infinitely tiny.

“Do you want me to…?” she asked with a small voice, but he shrugged and she sighed. Mrs. Dixon was looking through the window, as usual, practically absent to anything else, “Sometimes she needs a little chat to… come to”.

“I dunno what to say” he muttered, returning his gaze to the old woman.

“Maybe…” she started, but stopped. It was obvious that they had been apart from years and the reason had been absence of will more than anything else, and an emotional reencounter wasn’t an option. So they’d have to break the ice slowly.

She approached Mrs. Dixon’s bed and took her hand slightly, which provoked her to flinch. At least it was something.

“Mrs. Dixon” she called her name again, “your son is here”.

The woman didn’t move for seconds that seemed like hours. Beth held her breath the whole time until finally, the old lady turned her head and scanned Beth, with those penetrating blue eyes that her son had inherited.

“Son” she whispered.

“Yeah, he’s your son, Daryl. See?” Beth encouraged her, gesturing to behind her shoulder, where Daryl was awkwardly standing in the middle of the room. Beth tried to smile him softly, “Please, come closer”.

Daryl stayed still for a moment before he walked the steps that separated him from his mom. However, just before he was going to get to Beth, he stopped again. Beth turned around to look at him, confused. His jaw was tense and he seemed to look everywhere except her or the old woman that was lying on the bed. And suddenly, without saying a word, he spun around and exited at full speed.

Beth glanced at Mrs. Dixon one more time before she followed him through the aisle. Fortunately, the old lady was so medicated that she’d probably believe she was dreaming. Beth quickened her pace until she reached him on the entry, putting herself in front of the door.

“Mr. Dixon, wait!” she exclaimed, breathless, “Please, don’t leave”.

“I have to go back to the city” he growled, his glare fixed on the door behind Beth, “I’ve got nothing to do here”.

“That’s not true” she protested, “Your mom needs you”.

“She doesn’t even know who I am”, he countered harshly. Beth felt small for the second time that afternoon, but she didn’t quail. She had worked too hard to find him to just let him go without fight.

“Of course she knows. She remembers you, and your brother Merle, but she thinks she’s imagining it. She just needs a little bit of time. Time and patience”, she added.

“Just the two things that I don’t have” Daryl answered, almost grunting. Beth exhaled sharply.

“Listen, sir”, she said, starting to get pissed, “I have no idea what happened between you two, but whatever it was is over now. She isn’t the same. You can’t blame her for something that she probably doesn’t even remember” she finished, staring at him, trying to fix her eyes with his. When they finally did, she saw rage, frustration, and the glimpse of something that Beth tried to decipher, unsuccessfully. She tried to reassure him in everything she had just told him, but he didn’t seem willing to collaborate.

“Beth, the boiler is still broken and the technical, that jackass, says that-” Rosita appeared from a corner, and she stopped immediately when she saw Beth trying to prevent the passage of a man twice her height. Beth looked away for just a second, but it was enough to allow him to run away.

 

Before she could react, he had left on his huge bike, hidden by a cloud of dust.

 

* * *

Two days later, while Beth was trying to decide between being healthy and eating a cereal bar or send sensibility to hell and eat a Mars bar, she heard a roar outside. At first she thought that she was hallucinating, but then, when she withdrew from the old vending machine and looked through the window, she saw him. He was getting off his bike, and before she could realize, he was already entering through the door. She turned her head violently to see him come in, and then he saw her standing there, scanning him from top to bottom.

“What are you doing here?” she asked when she had approached him. Daryl shrugged.

“The other day I heard your partner saying that you needed someone to fix up the boiler. I can do it” he just said, shrugging again when she looked at him questioningly. But then Beth smiled, so widely that her cheeks hurt.

“That’s really nice of you” she said softly, “I’ll go talk to my boss. Please, sit down” and she gestured to one of the rickety chairs of the entry, at the same time that she turned on her heel. She had to stop herself from trotting while she searched Lori. She wasn’t going to tell that to her bosses. They’d end up scolding her about involving herself with patients’ relatives and the last thing she needed was to be fired. Her salary was low enough and she didn’t want to be unemployed.

 

Lori listened to her in silence while she explained all in a hurry. Once she had finished, the woman raised her eyebrows and leaned in to see Daryl, sitting on the edge of the chair, with his elbows resting on his knees and fiddling with his fingers, before she turned around to look questioningly to Beth. She flushed.

“It’s not what you think” she clarified.

“Mm-mm” Lori answered.

“It isn’t” Beth insisted, “He’s Mrs. Dixon’s son”.

“He’s the hottest relative that has entered these gates” Rosita said while she came in the room. Lori looked at her with a frown.

“Do you always have to say things like that?” the woman asked.

“Do you always have to be so bossy?” Rosita countered quickly. Lori opened her mouth to retort, but she was interrupted by Beth.

“So, is it okay with you?” Beth asked. Lori sighed.

“Yeah, of course, I’m the first one who wants to have hot water, but do me a favor and don’t let Jensen see him or he’ll kill us both”.

“Got it” Beth assured with a smile before she walked back to the entry.

Daryl was still there, with his gaze fixed on his hands, and he lifted his head when he heard her coming.

“My boss says everything’s alright” she said.

“Alright” Daryl answered; “I’ll pick up the tools” Beth nodded and waited for him to come back.

 

Five minutes later, while she led him to the boiler room, nervousness was starting to affect her. She had only went there twice since she had first started working on the nursing home, and she was always in a hurry, trying to avoid running into the cockroaches that lived happily there. Beth didn’t feel an excessive antipathy towards insects, but cockroaches were something that she just couldn’t stand.

 

They’d been there for a while, and Beth was constantly shifting her weight from one foot to the other, watching him work, passing him tools every now and then, and Daryl didn’t miss the nervous looks that the girl was sending everywhere.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just…” she swallowed, embarrassed, “I don’t really like cockroaches”.

Daryl let out a chuckle – deep, husky and almost guttural- and Beth shivered. She inspired sharply and contained herself to not deflate like a balloon.

“They’re not my favorite either” he answered, his gaze fixed on his task, “Finished”.

“Thank you so much” she said immediately, “How much?”

“Nothing” he responded, but Beth shook her head.

“No, seriously, how much is it?”

“I don’t do it for the money” Daryl countered.

“Then why?”

Daryl stared at her and stayed silent, looking down at the floor. Beth took a couple seconds to understand.

“Just time and patience” Beth repeated quietly.

“How much time?” he asked, without daring to look at her.

Beth shrugged.

“As much as she needs to come back” she just murmured. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, until Beth broke the silence, “We should go back upstairs”.

Daryl made a sound of agreement, and followed her upstairs, back to the first floor. Beth accompanied him to the door, not wanting to pressure him to see his mom if he didn’t feel ready.

“Wait a sec” she stopped him, grabbing him by his sleeve. She ran towards the break room and pulled out a few coins from his pocket, introducing them into the vending machine and taking out the wrapped chocolate before she came back to the door, “If you won’t let me pay you, at least let me give you this”.

Daryl watched the chocolate with an incredulous look. He looked at her then, but she just smiled softly.

“Thanks” he grunted.

“Thank _you”_ , Beth answered. Their fingers touched for an instant when she passed him the chocolate, and in that moment an electric current ran through her. She couldn’t help but squeeze his hand, and she felt very embarrassed, but she didn’t blush. When she lifted her head, he seemed more uncomfortable than her, though.

“Goodbye, Mr. Dixon” she told him.

“Goodbye…”

“Beth. Beth Greene”

“Goodbye, Nurse Greene”, he said, piercing her one more time with those steely blue eyes before he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	3. Reduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and a shiny motorbike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like this chapter as much as I liked writing it. Thanks again to my awesome editor Jen who dealt with my awful grammar mistakes and spends her time fixing them for me. You're incredible!  
> Enjoy!

Beth was organizing medicine boxes when Rosita appeared at full speed like a stampeding buffalo, throwing Beth straight into the inside of the cabinet.

“Beth, you’re not gonna believe-”

“Wait, wait” Beth interrupted her, trying to get out of the deathtrap her friend had put her in. She dropped the medicine boxes she was carrying on a shelf and turned around to listen to her, “Okay, _now”._

“It’s too much!” Rosita exclaimed, enraged, “You have to see this!”

Beth realized Rosita had a paper on her hand. She took it and started reading, frowning more and more as she advanced.

 

_Esteemed employees:_

_Due to the lack of resources and the difficult situation we’re going through right now, we’ve been forced to reduce work hours to eliminate expenses. In the following days we will be informing you about your new schedules and shifts._

_Thank you in advance for your collaboration and your invaluable work._

_Dawn Lerner, Director of Rosewood Retirement Centre_

“Can you believe it?” Rosita said as soon as Beth lifted her head from the paper, “This shit was hung up everywhere this morning. _Thanks for your invaluable work_?” Rosita huffed, “So invaluable that we’ve hardly seen a cent for months”.

“So what now?” Beth asked, “I need to work more hours”.

“So do I” Rosita answered, “How do they think we live? Eating air?”

Beth let out a shaky breath, lowering her gaze to the sheet again, rereading those lines over and over again, as if that would magically change the words on it.

“You know what?” said Rosita suddenly, “We should talk to Dawn”.

“There’s no use in it” both women turned around when they heard Lori, who was entering with a box. She dropped it noisily on the floor and started dusting off her hands, “I just talked to her”.

“And?” Rosita encouraged her after a few seconds of silence.

“And” she continued, “She’s told me that ‘we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good’”

“Fuck her!”

“Rosita!” Lori and Beth exclaimed, the latter spinning around to check that no one else had heard that, “That could cost you your job!”

“My job!? This is slavery, come on”, Rosita replied, her hands on her hips, “They don’t pay us, they change our shifts whenever they want to, and now they tell us that this bullshit is for our own good. It’s for the powerful people’s sake, like our _dear_ director. I’m sure she doesn’t have any trouble making it through the month. Let’s see how long it takes them to start firing people”.

Suddenly, Lori burst into tears, burying her face in her hands. Beth and Rosita looked at each other, alarmed, before they hurried to hold her, as if she was going to fall at any time.

“Lori, calm down, I didn’t mean it” Rosita corrected herself, “everything’s going to be fine”

“Nothing’s going to be fine” Lori shook her head, “I’m sure they’ll fire me”.

“What are you talking about?” Beth said, “You’re the one who’s keeping this place running, Lori, even Dawn knows that”.

Lori shook her head again, and dropped her hands to her sides.

“I’m pregnant” and she started sobbing again. Her partners looked at each other again, this time confused.

“But that’s good news, Lori” Beth comforted her, smiling, “That’s great actually”.

“How long do you think Dawn will take to fire me? They hardly pay us at all, why would they pay me maternity leave?”

“That’s illegal”, Rosita countered firmly, “They’d be in trouble if they fired you because of that. Besides, if they have to fire anyone, it would be me. We all know you’d work more in a day being eight months-pregnant than I do in two weeks”.

Lori started laughing nervously, and even Beth giggled, relaxing the atmosphere instantly.

“I still have coffee in my thermos”, Beth said, “Let’s take a cup and we calm down a bit, okay?”

“God, hurry up” Rosita urged her, pressing Lori’s back softly to make her walk, “With this shitty coffee machine, it’s been weeks since the last time I drank a decent cup of coffee”.

“They’re not even able to do that” Lori added, but this time in a humorous tone as they walked down the aisle. Beth intertwined her arm with Lori’s and Rosita did the same.

“Well, we can always ask Beth to call her friend the handy hottie” Rosita said teasingly.

Both women turned her heads to look at Beth with a mischievous grin.

“Stop” she protested, blushing, “He’s a patient’s son”.

“And what a son” Lori sighed, “I wouldn’t even mind having Mrs. Dixon as my in law”.

“Enough” Beth muttered, blushing.

“No mothers-in-law for me, thanks,” Rosita said mischievously, “just me and him. I’d show him one hell of a good time.”

“STOP!” Beth whined, mortified, before her partners started laughing scandalously. Beth was the youngest of them and yet sometimes she felt like she was the adult and her friends the high school teenagers. Just like she did in that moment.

 

* * *

Three days later, Beth was leaving the supermarket carrying two bags in one hand and the receipt in the other. Her forehead wrinkled every time she had to read that damn paper. That morning she had sat down to do math and write carefully a list of essential things she should buy. Just the necessities, she had said. But then she discovered than half of her cabinets and her fridge were practically empty. So the list started growing and growing, until finally she ended up doing the purchase of the week like she was preparing for the apocalypse.

Fortunately, on Friday she’d _finally_ receive her month’s pay. That didn’t mean that the nursing home didn’t owe her two months of delays anymore, but at least she’d have money for another thirty days. Thirty days without sweating every time a letter from the bank or some bill arrived.

A day will come when that problem would occur again, most likely sooner rather than later, but that day wasn’t today.

And Beth wasn’t going to spend her day worrying herself about next month.

 

She stopped at a traffic light as she saved the receipt in her jacket pocket. She took one of the bags in her free hand to distribute the load and her gaze started wandering down the street, until she noticed the magnificent bike that was parked in front sidewalk. In her hometown, a thing like that would have been main theme of conversation for at least three days, but there, in a bigger town, it was nothing special.

 

However, it was still an object of admiration. The kind of machine for which her brother would have sighed like a schoolgirl in love.

The street light turned green and she crossed. She didn’t even know why she stopped beside that beast with wheels, but sunlight made it shine like a dark diamond and it was almost _inviting._

No sooner had she lifted a finger to touch it when she heard a throat clearing that made her turn around sharply.

“Mr. Dixon” she panted, moving her hand away in a sudden. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She’d be lying if she said that she hadn’t thought about him at all. In fact, she did. Every single day. Every time she went into his mother’s room, when she saw those blue eyes that were starting to become faded, oblivious to the outside world and that however still seemed to keep a hint of the glint that they had possessed yesteryear. The same glint that now was piercing her.

He looked at her, at the bike, and then at her again questioningly.

“My brother Shawn loves bikes” she felt the need to explain herself, “And this one is… impressive”.

She swore she saw a light glow of pride before it faded suddenly.

“And…” he started quietly, “and you?”

“What about me?” Beth blinked, confused.

“Do you like them?” I mean… bikes” he added, almost shyly. Beth wasn’t able to understand why he was hiding behind his hair. She was the one that felt anchored to the ground every time he looked at her like that.

It was her turn to shrug.

“Dunno. There weren’t lots of bikes like this one in my hometown. Besides, I think my dad would have a heart attack if he saw me riding something like this” she answered with a weak smile. To her surprise, Daryl returned her a smile, in a brief and almost imperceptible way.

 

They stayed silent for a few seconds more until she dared to ask:

“Do you live around here?”

“Nah” he answered, “I just came to buy some parts”.

“Oh, right” Beth felt ridiculous standing there, looking at him. She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to find something to say, “Your mom is fine, but she misses you”.

She received a grunt as an answer, and suddenly, the atmosphere turned from lightly awkward to so tense that you could cut it.

“I know you have things to do, and work and things like that” she continued, “but maybe if you talked with your brother you could-”

“My brother isn’t around here” he cut her off harshly, “’s just me”.

“And do you think you could stop by some day? If you have a day off?”

He shrugged.

“C’mon, just for an hour. I’m sure she’d be so happy to see you” she insisted, smiling. He scratched his head just one second before he glazed at her and nodded, “Really? What about tomorrow?”

Another affirmative grunt. Her smile widened.

“Alright. See you tomorrow, Mr. Dixon” she said, unable to stop smiling. She turned around and started walking again. She almost couldn’t hear his voice before she turned the corner.

“See you tomorrow, Greene”.

 

* * *

Beth spent the rest of the day here and there, looking at the clock impatiently, but he didn’t appear. She couldn’t help it. She spent hours turning her head towards the door, expecting to see him entering, but her disappointment only grew as the day went on and only employees and relatives entered, none of them named Dixon.

 

It was nearly 10 p.m. Beth was changing her clothes, taking off that old uniform and putting on her real clothes. It was almost like she was changing her skin. She wasn’t Nurse Greene anymore, or Greene, she was just Beth, Bethy, Hershel’s little daughter who had gone crazy and moved to another town, away from her family to work in a nursing home that was falling apart.

 

She walked through the silent aisles of the nursing home and she wished the receptionist a good night quietly before she got out. A blow cold air received her, and she huddled even more in her coat.

It was then that she saw him, wrapped up in that leather jacket and that damn vest, leaning against his bike and smoking a cigarette. The cloud of smoke was more visible than he was. The parking lot was dark, with just two lampposts, each one put in one end of the property.

 

Her feet moved before her brain could stop them. If he acknowledged her approaching him, he didn’t give any sign that he did. Instead, he kept smoking, his gaze fixed on the cement beneath his feet.

Beth reached him breathless, panting.

But he remained silent, and she was so fed up.

“I’ve been waiting for you the whole day”, she said, “the whole damn day, checking if you were coming in to see your mother for five goddamn minutes. I had to bite my tongue to not tell her anything, and now I know that was the right thing to do. No mother wants to know that his son makes promises that he can’t keep”.

She expected Daryl to say something, anything, but he just exhaled another puff of smoke. She sighed.

“I’ve been working almost twelve hours, and you know what? I’m tired of dealing with you. You’re just so selfish. It doesn’t matter what I say, right? It doesn’t matter that you’re a better person than you make yourself out to be. You’re going to keep promising that you’ll come to get rid of me and then you won’t. Well, I won’t do this anymore. If you want to see her, you already know where she is. I’m not going to keep chasing you. I won’t.”

And with that, she turned around and started walking quickly towards the gates, grabbing the strap of her purse more firmly while she walked away.

“I couldn’t get in” his voice made her stop short. Slow, very slowly, as if he was setting a trap, Beth spun around.

“You got in the other day without trouble” she answered warily, her fist clenching around the strap.

“I… couldn’t” he repeated, lifting his gaze, and Beth understood. Her expression softened, feeling how the tension was leaving her shoulders, and she started walking again, that time towards him.

“You don’t have to do it on your own” she said gently, before she raised her hand to brush his arm, “You don’t have to press yourself. Bit by bit”.

And she smiled weakly, trying to encourage him. Finally, he dared to look at her, relaxing visibly.

“Sorry you waited for me” he grumbled.

“Doesn’t matter” she answered, shrugging.

Neither of them said anything for a few moments, just standing there.

“Do you want me to take you home?” he finally asked, motioning to the bike. Beth shook her head, smiling.

“Nah, I’m good. Besides, I like walking” she explained. Daryl nodded.

“Mind if I join you?” the question caught her by surprise. Suddenly, she felt like him, almost mute. She couldn’t do anything but shake her head.

They walked in silence, with the far sounds of some car in the background. Beth didn’t dare to look at him and he didn’t say anything. She felt almost like she was sixteen again, shy and unable to open her mouth to say something useful.

“You been living here for long?” he asked her, surprising her for the fifteenth time that night. Beth startled, not expecting to hear his voice.

“What?”

“Yesterday you said that…” Beth marveled at how shy he was, “that in your town my bike would have been talked about. Did you move long ago?”

“Oh” Beth said, understanding, and she nodded, “No, in a few months it will be a year. I had good luck, actually, finding work as soon as I finished college”.

He made a sound that she interpreted as a “right”.

“And you don’t have to call me nurse or Greene” she clarified, “I’m just Beth”.

Daryl nodded.

“Same for you” he muttered. Beth smiled, “You like working in the nursing home?”

“I love it” she answered immediately, “Everyone always told me that I should be a teacher or a child care worker, because they say I’m good with kids, but the elderly are really interesting people. They have lots of things to teach us. Do you like your job?”

Daryl took a couple of seconds to answer.

“It’s okay” he finally said, “just fix things, nothing permanent”.

“Well you’re really good at it, judging by how you fixed the boiler” she responded, smiling. He shrugged again.

“It’s nothing”

“Yeah it is” she countered, without stopping smiling. He didn’t answer and Beth took it as a small victory.

They kept walking in a comfortable silence until they reached the doorway of her apartment building. Beth took more time than usual to take out her keys.

“Thank you so much for walking me home” she thanked him, “it was nice of you”.

“It’s nothing” he said again, and she laughed.

“By the way”, she said suddenly, remembering, “what are you going to do with the bike?”

He looked at her an instant before he smiled lightly.

“I’m sure you can watch it until I come back” he said, with such a deep voice that Beth felt goose bumps running through her.

“Okay” she whispered breathlessly.

“Good night, Beth”.

“Good night, Daryl”.

She felt her legs trembling as soon as he turned around and started walking away from her, as if she didn’t have to keep anchored to the ground. She panted slightly when he spun around again, just an instant to look at her, and turned immediately.

 

And when he had turned the corner, and only then, she allowed herself to giggle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	4. Coffee machines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth, Rosita and a coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my wonderful friend Jen who edits this mess for me. You're incredible ^^  
> I hope you like reading it as much as I loved writing this chapter.  
> Enjoy!

Chapter 4

Beth spent another two days without any word from Daryl. She said to herself that it was silly to think so much about someone who probably remembered her as a bother, but she couldn’t help it: his Triumph was still parked out there, shining almost aggressively.

 

It wasn’t until the third day while she was having coffee with Alexis when he turned up in the entry. She raised her sight from the cup and stared at him, maybe for too long or maybe just enough to make him shift his weight from one leg to another nervously. She hurried to stand up when she realized his awkwardness and smiled at him.

“Hi” she greeted him, trying not to sound too nervous.

“I just came to pick up the bike and…” he started, but his voice starting fading slowly, until he stopped talking altogether, scrubbing his head distractedly.

“Oh,” Beth answered, almost breathless. She swallowed and smiled again, “You must have been busy, right?”

He raised an eyebrow, confused.

“I mean, it took you three days in picking it up and” she cleared her throat, feeling stupid, “well, you know” she finalized, bowing her head.

 _Bravo, Beth,_ she thought, _and what do you care about how much he took to pick it up or why? And why did you keep count?_

“I went hunting” he explained, and she raised her head, surprised.

“You hunt?” he nodded, “Wow. Are you good at it?”

Daryl shrugged and she sighed, relieved that he hadn’t sent her to hell for being nosy.

“Well” she cleared her throat again, “do you want to come in to-”

He cut her off by shaking his head sharply and took a step backwards. Beth almost took one forward, but she contained herself.

“Okay, alright” she added quickly, raising both hands as if that could calm him. He looked at her for almost a minute until the tension left his shoulders.

They stayed silent for a while. Finally, he broke the silence.

“I should go” he grunted, and she couldn’t do anything more than nod. It was not like she really wanted him to leave, but what could she do to avoid it?

Daryl had just turned when a woman’s voice made them both spin around:

“Hey, you!” she exclaimed, and Beth observed, dumbfounded, how Rosita approached him with shamelessly and reached him, “You’re Beth’s friend, right?”

“Rosita” Beth hissed, but she ignored her. Daryl stared at her, like he couldn’t quite believe that she was talking to him, until he nodded.

“Beth told me you fix things” Daryl nodded again, “How much do you charge for fixing coffee machines?”

“Coffee machines” he repeated, as if he didn’t understand.

“Yeah, coffee machines” Rosita affirmed, putting her hands on her hips, “You know those machines which make coffee and are so practical-”

“I know what a coffee machine is” he grunted, interrupting her.

“Then, could you?” she asked again, “We’ve spent weeks without having decent coffee and Beth says you’re good at your job”.

Daryl looked at her and Beth wished the earth would swallow her.

“I haven’t-”

“Yes or no?” Rosita insisted. Daryl seemed to think about it for a moment, and after looking at Beth one more time, he nodded, “Okay, perfect. Beth, take him to the break room”.

And without further ado, she left, leaving them both alone in the entry. Beth didn’t know who was more perturbed by that intromission from Rosita, but she knew who was blushing more. She felt like she was going to explode any second.

“I have the tools in the truck” he muttered after an instant, and she nodded energetically. He came back two minutes later, bringing a small tool box, and Beth guided him through one of the aisles to the break room where the rickety machine was.

Beth observed him working in silence. He didn’t need more than two minutes to turn around.

“’s the thermal fuse” he said.

“Oh” she answered as if she had understood. He made a little gesture with his hand and she approached, maybe too eagerly to see what he was indicating her.

“Do you see that one that’s marking?” he asked, and she nodded, “One is same as infinite. That means the thermal fuse is cut off”.

“Can you fix it?”

Daryl uttered an affirmative mutter.

“We have to replace it with another one, but this machine is too old. It probably has more things broken, and a thermal fuse that fits won’t be cheap. It would be better to just buy another coffee machine rather than fix this”.

“Yeah, I don’t think my boss will be glad to hear that…” Beth sighed, running a hand through her hair.

“I have a few. I can try them if you want, but I can’t assure you this shit won’t break again when you try to turn it on” he said softly, and she looked at him.

“No, don’t bother” Beth smiled, smiling, “I’ll talk to my colleague, she always listens to her”.

“Your boss doesn’t like spending money too much, does she?” Daryl asked while he put the ohmmeter in the box. Beth wrinkled her nose and shrugged.

“Money is always scarce here” Beth explained, passing him the cover of the circuit so he could put it back, “It’s not like I’ve been working here for a long time, but we don’t get much money. We do what we can though” she added in a lighter tone, “We don’t need a fortune. We just need people willing to take care of the elderly”.

And she smiled, trying to lighten a subject that she didn’t quite like. She had spent the whole day thinking about the fact that she had to pay another instalment on her car, and about how she was going to convince her landlord to give her three more days.

“Thank you so much for checking it” she told him, “How much?”

Daryl huffed.

“I’m not gonna charge you anything for putting two cables together and looking at a number”.

“At least let me pay you for the time you’ve lost today. I’m sure you had jobs to do”.

“Not many” he grunted.

“Beth, can you come? It will be just a moment” Lori appeared and Beth nodded.

“Sure. Can you wait for me?” Beth asked, and Daryl grunted something that wasn’t a yes nor a no, but more like a “if you want”. Anyway, she was satisfied and exited the room, just to be crashed immediately against a wall. Beth emitted a whimper.

“What. Are. You. Doing!?” Lori and Rosita had cornered her, each one in one of her sides. Beth hissed when she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder, and started rolling it in order to try to alleviate it.

“What are you talking about?” she protested.

“Beth Ann Greene, I had to ask the handy hottie to fix the coffee machine for us” Rosita whispered, “Why do you think I did it?”

“Maybe because it’s broken and you’re a coffee addict?” Beth suggested, but she muted when she saw the gaze the woman gave her.

“So you could fuck him” Rosita exclaimed, and Beth covered Rosita’s mouth with her hand immediately.

“Don’t say things like that out loud!” she hissed, furious, “Besides, it’s not… it’s not like that”.

Lori raised an eyebrow.

“For God’s sake, but have you seen him?” Lori said, lowering her voice to a sensible volume.

“Of course I’ve seen him” Beth countered, blushing, “but it’s not professional. He’s a patient’s son”.

“It’s not like there are any rules against it” retorted the oldest of the women.

“You’re not going to sleep with a patient, just with her son” Rosita snorted, receiving a poke in her ribs.

“Could you shut up?” Beth asked, mortified. She closed her eyes and sighed, “Fine, I like him. So what?”

“So you have to do something, honey, or he’ll leave” Lori said softly.

“I don’t know what to do to make him stay”.

“Anything” Rosita emphasized, “but don’t let him go”.

And with that, they threw her back to the break room, with such enthusiasm that she practically crashed against Daryl’s chest. She wobbled, and her body got ready for the imminent fall, until she felt Daryl was holding her.

“Sorry, sorry” she muttered, leaning against his chest momentarily. She moved away instantly, clearing her throat.

“You ok?” he grunted, and Beth nodded, without being able to look at his face.

“I wasn’t paying attention” she justified herself, trying to placate the flush. God, wasn’t she going to stop blushing like she was thirteen?

“Well, I’m done. I should go” he said, and she nodded, dying of embarrassment. She saw the looks that her friends were sending her along the aisle, gesturing at her-Lori in a normal way, Rosita, in a quite more censurable one- and Beth’s eyes widened, waving her hand beside her neck to say “enough”.

 

When they reached the entry, Beth was so incredibly nervous. She didn’t want him to go, but she didn’t know what to tell him either, and suddenly she felt like every eye was on them. She wouldn’t be surprised in the least if Rosita had been divulging a rumor that they had hooked up around the nursing home.

“Thanks again” she said, trying to smile without having her lips’ corners shaking.

“’S nothing” he answered, “Bye”.

He had not taken two steps towards the exit when her hands closed strongly around his forearm. As soon as he turned around, Beth dropped her hands, shocked by the fact that she had been able to do that.

“Uh, I…” she stuttered, “it’s just I think a thank you is not… enough for everything that you’ve done for us”.

“I jus’ plugged two cables in a machine”.

“And the boiler-“

“I just moved shit around”

“Anyway” she cut him off, trying to spill it before her bravery attack faded again, “I’d like to thank you personally. D’you wanna grab coffee some time?”

Time seemed to stretch like gum. Her heart was beating so fast while she waited for his answer that she wouldn’t have been surprised if he could have heard it.

“I mean…” she started again, this time in a barely audible mutter, “only if you want, of course. It’s not like you have to or anything, because you know, I don’t want you to-“

“Okay” he grunted, and she raised her head, shocked.

“Yeah?” she searched for his confirmation, and he made an affirmative sound. The smile that surged in that instant was so wide that she thought she would get some muscle in her face injured, “Alright, then… Do I call you on the number that-?”

“We could go now” he interrupted her abruptly, and Beth was speechless again.

“Now? But umm, I don’t know if I have free time, and-”

“For God’s sake, Beth, leave! I’ll cover you!” Rosita’s scream resounded through the nursing home’s walls, and that time, every eye turned towards Daryl and Beth, but for real. Beth felt like she could die of embarrassment.

She closed her eyes, mortified, but when she opened them she found that Daryl was just as or even more embarrassed than her, with his cheeks burning red. And in that moment, she couldn’t help but laugh softly, and she couldn’t help either that her heart skipped a beat when she saw that he was smiling mildly.

“Let’s go” she panted, nervous, and he opened the door, letting her pass first.

* * *

 

They’d been sitting in that small café for five minutes, each one with their sight fixed in the cup in front of them, without saying a word. Beth was grabbing the chair sharply, and Daryl seemed pretty interested in his thumb nail.

“So…” she started, “are you self-employed?”

Daryl grunted a yes.

“How do you know so much about those things?”

“I don’t know _so much_ ” Daryl shrugged, “it’s just things I’ve been pickin up”.

“I’d like to be able to do it” she admitted, grinning, “I’m a mess using my hands for anything else besides playing instruments”.

“What do you play?” he asked her with genuine curiosity.

“Guitar and piano” Beth answered, biting the inside of her cheek, “My mom taught me to play the piano when I was little, and my brother Shawn taught me how to play the guitar. In my house music’s always been pretty important. What about you?”

“Not in mine” he said harshly, “we used to have an old turntable, but it broke. I just listened to the shitty music from the old jukeboxes in bars”.

“Oh” Beth muttered, “And what do you like to do?”

“Dunno” he said.

“Don’t ‘dunno’” she countered, imitating his tone in a very successful way. He raised his sight and looked at her with both eyebrows raised, half amused. She blushed softly, “Tell me”.

“Don’t do much. Hunting. Riding my bike and…” he shrugged again, “That’s all, really”.

“Don’t you like your job?”

“I have to deal with a lotta people” he admitted, “And most of them are idiots who think they know everything”.

Beth giggled.

“That happens in the nursing home too. Relatives blame you for everything that happens. I’m still not used to the shouting part”.

“I don’t usually let them shout at me” he said, and her smile faded. Of course not. She was a tiny woman, the youngest nurse and the one who looked the most naïve. An easy target. Daryl was a man who looked able to break the neck of anyone who tried to make him lose his temper.

She switched the subject.

“When’d you learn to hunt?”

“When I’s a kid”.

“Your daddy teach you?” she asked innocently, but he tensed instantly. She saw it in the way his eyes narrowed and he leaned against his chair, like he wanted to shut off. She wondered what had she said. Did he have a hard relationship with his dad too?

“Yeah” he murmured, and she felt bad for no reason.

“We should go back” Daryl said suddenly, standing up. Beth followed him, still confused, and he paid despite her weak protests which fell on deaf ears as soon as he got out, as he was almost running away from her. They walked in silence the rest of the way.

 

When they reached the entry, he stood there, awkward, and she lifted her head.

“I’m sorry about before” she tried to apologize.

“Didn’t do anything wrong” he excused her, but Beth shook her head.

“It’s obvious that your family it’s not your favorite subject” Beth answered, trying to sound casual and smiling softly, “So, sorry. I won’t mention it again”.

Neither of them said anything for an instant, until he raised his eyebrows.

 _“Again_?” he said in a humorous tone. Beth grinned.

“Well, now it’s my turn to invite you, right?” she played along. Daryl returned her a smile very lightly, but enough to make her nervous, “I call you on number from before?”

“Yeah” Daryl affirmed.

“Okay” Beth whispered, “Bye, Daryl”.

He nodded and turned around. Beth stood there until he disappeared. She released the breath she had been holding and entered the nursing home on shaky legs.

 

She instantly found all of her partners clustered in the entry, dissipating as soon as she entered, dissimulating in the worst way possible.

Everyone… except Rosita, who smiled openly, without trying to hide the fact that she had been spying on her, and whistled.

“Very well, Greene. You’re improving” she said, approaching Beth until they were just inches away, “But…”

She raised her hand and pinched her breast quickly over her bra, making her jump.

“…I have to lend you something to emphasize your charms”.

Beth thought she would end up fainting if her blood kept rushing to her face so many times in a single day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and please comment!


	5. Crush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and a missed date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to Jen for editing this for me! You're just amazing :) And I hope you this chapter as much as I enjoyed -and suffered- writing it.

Beth woke up suddenly, startled by the incessant noise of the alarm clock. She couldn’t help it: her dad always told her that she had a very small heart and that she got startled by anything, so it was common that every morning she almost fell off the bed because of the shock. She turned off the little machine and sat up in her bed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She had only slept a couple hours and the last thing she wanted was to get up and go to work.

 

She untangled herself from the mess of sheets in which she was trapped and headed towards the bathroom to have a shower while she hummed quietly. She had never been an energetic person in the mornings, preferring to stay silent and having her coffee calmly while she listened to her siblings chattering, but since she had moved from the farm to the nearest town, she missed the fuss that she had hated for so many years. Because of that, every morning, she would sing quietly or turn on the TV to listen to the newscaster’s monologue while she showered. It was a weird habit, but once she acquired it, she couldn’t remove it.

 

She turned the shower on while she kept crooning and took off her clothes. She was letting her hair down from her messy ponytail when the doorbell rang. She decided to ignore it, believing it would be the postman, and she continued, but when the doorbell rang again, this time almost aggressively, Beth took on her bathrobe as fast as she could and went to see who it was.

She needed just a moment to see it and to close the door again sharply.

“Beth, open the fucking door” the man grunted. Her heart was beating at full speed, but she took courage and opened, just to find Len, her landlord, “My money”.

“Len, listen, I-”

“No, Beth, you’ve been fucking with me for too long, you hear me?” Len barked, pushing more at the door to come in. Beth backed and contained a squeak when she felt his eyes scanning her from top to bottom, almost gloating, before he frowned again.

“On Friday they’ll pay me and I’ll give you every penny, I promise you” she said, covering herself even more, “It’s the day after tomorrow. Just two more days and you’ll have all your money. I swear, Len, but please, give me a little bit more time”.

Len breathed through his nostrils sharply, but with a thoughtful expression.

“A’right” he said finally, “on Friday. If you don’t pay me what you owe me, I’ll kick you out”.

“Okay” Beth sighed. She approached the door again and opened it, “I have to get ready to go to work, so…”

Len walked in a slow and almost hesitant way toward the door, without looking away from her. He stopped and huffed.

“It’s a damn shame” he said suddenly.

“What’s a shame?” Beth asked quietly.

“You could pay the rent in other ways if you wanted, Bethy” he answered, with a smile that didn’t have anything friendly in it.

“Goodbye, Len” she muttered, without any intention of being polite anymore, before she closed the door in his face, and she stepped away from it only when she heard him heading toward the stairs.

 

She didn’t even know how she had been able to bear having Len as her landlord. She had arrived at Newborn and she had discovered that she couldn’t afford a single apartment. She was already searching for rooms in rent when Len appeared and offered her his for a more than a moderate price. Beth should have been suspicious then. If there was something that characterized her –and not just her ability to startle- it was how fast she saw through people. And that man had made her uncomfortable since the first day. And it was not just by the lascivious looks with which he delighted her since they met, but also by the way he had to talk, to act. There was something _sinister_ about Len, and Beth didn’t like it a single bit.

 

She sighed, with her heart still beating fast because of the brief encounter, and looked up at the clock.

“Shit!” she exclaimed, running to the shower at a rush. She couldn’t take a dismissal right now. She had to get by until Friday.

* * *

 

“…and I don’t know what is wrong with him lately, it’s like he was mad at me for something. He wouldn’t look at me, or talk to me, or even touch me, he goes to work so early and he comes back late at night… sometimes I wonder if he’s changed his mind and he doesn’t want to have the baby”.

“I’m sure he’s just afraid, it’s normal, all men are when their woman gets pregnant”.

“You don’t even have children” Lori countered. Rosita shrugged.

“So what? I don’t need to get married to know, all men are the same. How could he not want to have a baby with you? He should thank you that you’re puking every morning.”

Lori started laughing and Rosita raised her eyebrows when she noticed Beth, with her head bowed and staring at the table.

“Earth to Beth” Rosita waved a hand in front of her face and Beth raised her head, “What’s wrong?”

“Huh?” she blinked, “Oh, nothing, it’s just I couldn’t sleep last night”.

“Right. And how are you doing with Mrs. Dixon’s son?” Lori said.

“Who?” Rosita asked, confused.

“The handy hottie” both Beth and Lori answered at unison, and the latter turned around to looked at her with a mischievous smile. Beth flushed.

“It’s just she always call him that…” she explained.

“Well, and what else? Have you met again? Come on, tell us” Rosita demanded, leaning even more into her. Beth shrugged and stared at the table again. The little sound that both women did made her frown.

“What?”

“You didn’t call him” Lori asseverated, leaning in her chair.

“Really, I don’t know what you’re playing at, Beth” Rosita continued, shaking her head, “Seriously, how many guys do you think appear every day through this door? You’re the one who was staring at him all the time. You can’t just give up _now_ ”.

“I haven’t _given up_ on him,” Beth protested, “but I looked for him to make sure Mrs. Dixon wasn’t  expelled, not to…”

“…fuck him?” Rosita finished.

“Shh” Beth silenced her immediately, covering her mouth, “Could you stop saying the f word out loud? What if Dawn turns up, or Doctor Jensen?”

“Maybe they’d have a heart attack. Who knows how long they’ve been without getting laid.” Rosita commented nonchalantly. Lori looked at Beth with a resigned expression, and then stood up and grabbed Rosita by her arm.

“C’mon, we have watch in the dining room. And you”, she added, pointing at Beth, “call him now, or I promise you I will”.

Beth took her threat seriously. Lori could be pretty intimidating when she tried to be, and if there was an adjective able to describe that woman perfectly was “decided”. She always got what she planned, so Beth was convinced that Daryl would receive a call sooner or later, and she said to herself that it was better that she was the one who made that call.

 

She repeated to herself that the reason she was doing this was to avoid Lori calling him while she headed towards the rooms of the elderly to clean up while they were having lunch. When she got to room 412, she wasn’t surprised to find Mrs. Dixon lying in her bed, looking through the window, as usual. She hardly ever had meals with the rest of the elderly, so Beth used to bring her food to make sure she ate something.

“Good morning, Mrs. Dixon” she said as every morning while she opened more the curtains and relocated her pillows carefully, “How are you feeling today?”

The woman didn’t answer, and Beth stopped herself from sighing. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and started tidying up the few things that the old woman had in her room. She saw that there was something in the floor, and when she bent down, she found the picture of Mrs. Dixon with her two children. She reread the inscription: _Merle and Daryl, March 3_ _rd_ _, 1980_ and looked again at the child with dark hair who seemed to be trying to eat his own fist.

She couldn’t help to gasp when she felt the shaky hand of Mrs. Dixon grabbing her uniform. She was staring at her intently and she seemed to be trying to tell her something. Beth dropped the picture immediately in her bedside table and held her hand.

“Tell me, what’s wrong? Do you want water?” she raised her hand to the glass beside her bed, but the old woman shook her head, “Are you not feeling well? Do you want me to get the doctor?”

The lady’s lips wavered for a few instants that seemed eternal to Beth, who was preparing herself to go get the doctor, until finally Mrs. Dixon’s vocal chords emitted a weak sound.

“My…my bo-boy…”

“Your boy? You mean your son, right?” she asked softly, relaxing. The old woman nodded with great effort.

“My boy… I want my boy” her hand found Beth’s forearm and squeezed it with a surprising strength for her age. Beth omitted the pain that extended through her arm when she felt Mrs. Dixon’s nails digging in her flesh and approached her, “Bring him to me, bring me my boy…

“I’ll call him, okay, Mrs. Dixon? I’ll call him and he’ll come to see you” she promised her, squeezing her hand back softly. Suddenly, the woman’s eyes seemed to be floating in a haze and she dropped her forearm. Mrs. Dixon rolled to her side and stared at the wall in front of her, as if that conversation had never taken place.

“My good boy” she murmured before she was gone. Beth watched her, hoping to see any other reaction, but it was obvious that Mrs. Dixon had said everything she had to.

 

Beth sighed and covered her with the sheet carefully, leaving one of her favorite magazines in her bedside table in case she came back and got nervous. She exited the room and kept working, this time without being able to forget Daryl. She had to call him. She knew it perfectly. She had to do it for poor Mrs. Dixon, to avoid her expel, to avoid Lori taking action –or worse, Rosita- and calling him and making a fool of her, to improve the old lady’s state…

Calling him was the solution to all her problems.

But then, why did she feel like her heart was going to jump out of her chest while she dialed his number and waited for him to answer?

“Yeah?” his voice received her and suddenly her legs felt shaky again. She wanted to huff before the absurd of the situation, having a crush on a man much older than her with whom had talked only three times. She felt like when she was fourteen and sighed with her friends when they ran into older boys, “Who is this?”

She realized she had been a couple seconds in silence and Daryl should be thinking that it was some weirdo calling to breathe profusely and say nothing.

“Hi” she said, maybe too effusively, “I’m Beth Greene, a nurse at Rosewood, where your mother is”.

“I know who you are, Beth”, _amazing, Greene_ , “something wrong?”

“What? Uh, no. Well, yeah. See, your mom… could you come to see her?”

“Why?”

“Cause she’s your mom” she answered automatically, like it was the most natural thing to say. She realized too late that his relationship with his mom wasn’t like the one she had with her own mom and continued, “And because she misses you. She asked me about you today”.

“Oh yeah?”

“Well, maybe not using those words exactly, but basically yes” she said, lowering her voice.

Daryl didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and  Beth bit her thumbnail nervously and looked around her to check that no one was gazing at her, as if anyone who walked in right there and saw her talking on the phone would know immediately what was happening.

“A’right” Daryl answered finally, “I have to work, but I’ll come at six”.

“At six?” she bit her tongue to not gasp when Rosita appeared suddenly behind her and started making mute gestures of “is it him?” Beth nodded quickly and turned her back to Rosita, but she stood in front of her again, “Okay, at six then”.

Another grunt, and in that instant, Rosita took the phone and hung it up. Beth looked at her shocked.

“What are you doing?!” she exclaimed, incredulous.

“You have to hang up first, Greene. Rule one” she said, raising a finger to symbolize the number.

“You’re crazy” Beth muttered, taking her phone back and putting it in her pocket.

“But I know how to make you get the handy hottie”.

“Rosita, I’ve already told you that I won’t fuck him!” Beth exclaimed, provoking her voice to resound throughout the aisle. She thought she would die of embarrassment when Doctor Jensen stepped out of his office and frowned at her.

“Ladies, would you mind leaving your… _private_ conversations for when you get off of work? And please, I’d thank you if you could keep your voice down while you’re here” he said, in a disdain-filled tone.

Beth muttered a rushed “sorry” but Rosita just huffed. The doctor’s eyes widened, indignant and surprised that someone had dared to defy him, but then Beth took her by her arm and brought her back to the dining room.

“You’re so evil-minded” Rosita said suddenly, “I’m doing this for Mrs. Dixon”.

Beth snorted.

“You’re incredible”.

“I know” she countered simply, “Listen; now seriously, you should make sure he stays around here. Not just for his mom, who wants to see him, but also for you. How do you know that you two can’t have something else? What have you got to lose?”

“My dignity” Beth answered quietly. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if Daryl ignored her and she had to keep seeing him after.

“I think that after what just happened, you don’t have much of that left” Rosita joked, receiving a poke, “Come on, please? Try. For me?” she added, pouting.

Beth had to contain a smile and pretend weariness as she sighed dramatically.

“Well… either way I’d have to do it if I want him to keep visiting his mom” she gave in finally. Rosita made a happy noise and hugged her tightly, before she moved away to look at the clock.

“It’s half past two. I’ll see you at four in the emergency exit on the back of the nursing home”.

“What-?” Beth started, but Rosita had already run away in the other direction. Beth huffed and tucked another strand of hair behind her ear before she kept with her patrol.

* * *

 

 Beth was leaning nervously against the wall near by the emergency exit where she was supposed to meet Rosita, looking at her wristwatch every few minutes. It was ten past four and Rosita hadn’t turned up yet.

“This is ridiculous” she said to the fluorescents of the ceiling, sighing. Just in that instant, she heard steps approaching, and appeared Rosita and Joan, the receptionist, scanning her with grins from ear to ear.

“Is she?” the receptionist asked. Rosita nodded solemnly.

“Joan, you know me. I work here” she added, but both women ignored her. They approached her, and suddenly, they dragged her to one of the rooms where they kept the medicines and started stripping her. Beth covered herself instinctively: she had always been really self-conscious about her own body, even when she was a child, and the fact that they were practically ripping out her clothes made her feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Oh, c’mon, we all have the same stuff” Joan snorted, moving Beth’s arms away with a blow with the hand. Both Rosita and Joan started scanning her so intently that Beth flushed and felt the need to cover herself again, but she stayed still.

Suddenly, Rosita stepped forward and raised her breasts. Beth gasped and moved away.

“What on Earth are you doing?” she asked, in a volume much louder than she meant.

“You have beautiful breasts!” Rosita exclaimed, indignant, “And those bras you wear don’t do you any favors. Oh my god” she sighed before she approached one of the back shelves and took out a bag.

“But…”

“It’s just a few days ago I had a date with Abe and I didn’t have the time to dress up, so I brought a few things  here” Rosita explained quickly. Beth frowned.

“Who’s Abe?” and suddenly her bra was on the floor and Rosita was clasping her another one.

“Hush now, we’re doing something else”.

“Do you dye your hair?” Joan asked her, taking a strand of hair between her fingers, and Beth shook her head, “Yeah, sure”.

“C’mon, sit down here” Rosita commanded her, setting a footstool under her butt and throwing her blouse to her again. Beth put it on quickly and noticed, horrified, that she had a push-up bra now, “Don’t make that face, that’s much better”.

Beth tried to protest, but she was quickly silenced by Joan grabbing her face suddenly and turning her head sharply from one side to another.

“This girl doesn’t have a single flaw in her face” Joan muttered.

“I know, you could almost hate her, right?” Rosita commented cheerfully, before she stood behind Beth and started taking off her ponytail.

Beth didn’t know where to look. In some moments she wanted to scream, “This is for Mrs. Dixon!” but every single word died in her throat or was hushed by the “shh” of the women.

When she reacted, Rosita and Joan had moved away from her and Rosita was raising a mirror in front of her with a content expression.

“So what do you think?” Rosita asked expectantly. Beth’s jaw dropped to the floor. Rosita had brushed her hair and let it down, with two braids on each side and stuck behind. Joan had painted her stripe line and had put pink lip gloss on her, and suddenly, Beth lowered her eyes and found her frayed uniform that also had a coffee stain near her blouse pocket.

“Eh… it’s… _interesting_ ” she stuttered. Both women looked at each other, confused.

“Too much makeup?” Joan asked, raising an eyebrow. Rosita frowned.

“Hair that looks like a wasps’ nest?” countered Rosita in the same tone.

“No, no, no” Beth rushed to say, afraid that her partners would start fighting right there, “It’s just too much. I mean, I would never go to work like this”.

“That’s true” Joan admitted.

“Yeah, maybe it doesn’t look really natural” confirmed Rosita. Suddenly, her eyes widened and clasped her hands, “Okay, you can put up your hair and take off your makeup, but don’t even think about touching the lip gloss. He needs to look at your lips”.

Beth held back a snort.

“Okay” she gave in. She took her hair elastic and collected her hair quickly, relieved of not having all that hair bothering her while she worked. She accepted the cleansing wipe that Joan reluctantly offered her and eagerly removed all the makeup before she looked at herself one more time.

“Smug” said Rosita. Beth smiled, “Well, I think our work here is done”.

Rosita hid the bag again and opened the door to get out with Joan, but then something stopped her and she stood in the doorway.

“Wait” she whispered suddenly, “don’t you think that some pretty earrings-?”

“No!” Beth exclaimed exasperated when she saw the thoughtful glint in their eyes.

“Alright, calm down. Every day you’re more like Lori” Rosita teased her, closing the door just when an empty medicine box hit it. Beth stayed there, trying to keep calm. She looked at her wristwatch and saw that it was just half past four. She had time to take a linden tea and distract herself with her work until he arrived.

 _Focus on your job and everything will be fine_ , she repeated to herself one more time, closing the door behind her.

* * *

 

 Beth thought she’d have a heart attack if she thought about Daryl walking in one more time. She had been biting her nails and she hated it, but she couldn’t help it. She had to stay in the living room with the elderly, and she supposed it was not a very good idea to tell her problem to octogenarians.

 _What problem are you talking about_ , she scowled herself, _there’s nothing to worry about, stop making things up._

 

She kept telling herself that while she fidgeted with her hands nervously and stared at the door. Finally, at seven to six, Beth had already taken three linden teas and her heartbeats hadn’t lowered in the least.

“Greene” Beth turned around and found Dawn under the doorway of her office. She made Beth a gesture to approach, “Go ahead and come in”.

“But… But I…”

“Do you have something else to do besides staring at the entry?”

“I was waiting for a patient’s relative-”

“I’m sure Joan will be able to show them where their family is. Come on”.

With a resigned sigh, Beth approached and closed her eyes unconsciously when she heard the door closing. Now she didn’t know why she was afraid. Well, she wasn’t afraid of knowing what Dawn would tell her. She was _terrified._ She could already listen to her telling her that they didn’t need her help in the nursing home.

 _It’s over_ , Beth thought, _they’re going to fire me._

“Well… Beth, right?” she nodded. Dawn smiled softly, “Don’t be nervous. You don’t need to be”

“Is that so?” Beth asked without being able to contain herself. Dawn’s smile widened and she shook her head, like she was explaining something to a little child.

“Of course not. Your superiors have always given me really good informs of your job” Dawn answered while looked through some papers. Beth got to see her file picture before the director closed the file abruptly and put her elbows in the table, smiling again, “Punctual, hardworking, patients love you… why would you need to be nervous? Is there something that I should know?”

_I have inappropriate thoughts about a patient’s relative._

_I ordered the reparation of a nursing home’s property to a stranger._

_My friend has a stash of makeup in the medicine room._

_I don’t have inappropriate thoughts, I have incredibly inadequate thoughts about a patient’s relative._

“No, nothing” Beth answered, returning her a smile. Dawn laughed softly and intertwined her hands on the table.

“See, Beth, I don’t like beating around the bush. You should know by now that we’re going through a time when the subventions are practically inexistent. That’s why we have to reduce your working day. From now on you’ll work in the night shift just two days a week”.

“But I-“

“The rest will be duty hours and afternoon shifts” Dawn continued as if she hadn’t heard her, “We’ll email you your new schedule-“

“I need to work on the night shift-“

“You start next week. You can leave” and with that and another smile, Dawn gestured her to leave. Beth swallowed before she stood up very slowly and headed towards the door. She had just turned the doorknob when Dawn called her again, “Oh, and Beth”.

“Yes?” she whispered, barely turning around.

“Tell nurse Grimes that I need to talk to her as soon as possible, please”.

Beth closed her eyes an instant and nodded.

“Thank you, Beth”.

She didn’t even know how she was able to get out of the office. She heard some of her partners calling her name, but she kept walking. She didn’t want them to see her crying.

 

She stopped when she reached the back of the nursing home, where there were just the bins next to another emergency exit and an old garden where there wasn’t any flower left, and she leaned her back against the metallic door, huffing.

Her mind starting thinking frantically, doing the math. She could try looking for some extra job. She could give piano lessons, or private music lessons. She could work in the evenings the days she had afternoon shifts. Yes, she could make it.

 

She was so focused on her inner calculations that she took a couple minutes to realize that it had started drizzling since she was protected by a small roof. After that, she took another couple seconds to react and remember that Daryl should be waiting for her.

She saw it was ten past six and started running to the entry. She crashed against Joan, who was carrying lots of papers in her hands, the same papers that started flying around.

“Damn it!” Joan swore. Beth bent down next to her to help her pick up the mess.

“It was my bad, I’m so sorry” Beth said to her, giving Joan papers at full speed. The receptionist shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter, I was gonna throw it anyway” Joan answered, but she took the papers from Beth’s hands with brusqueness.

“Joan, have you seen Mrs. Dixon’s son?” the receptionist raised her head and looked at Beth, frowning.

“I thought he was with you and that he had already left”

“What? No”

“He arrived five minutes ago and I told him that you would probably been waiting for him in his mother’s room”.

“No, I was outside”.

“Then you know where he is”, and she shrugged, standing up and leaving Beth kneeling on the floor.

Shit. He was probably gone again.

 

A few seconds later she stood up too and headed towards Mrs. Dixon’s room, praying silently so the poor woman was still gone and didn’t remember anything that she could have told her that morning.

Her heart skipped a beat when she found Daryl in the middle of the room. Mrs. Dixon was soundly asleep, her back facing him, and he was just looking at her. Beth would have preferred to leave, but then he turned around – _how could have heard me?_ \- And pierced her with his eyes again. However, Beth didn’t feel intimidated or vulnerable like other times. Not it was _him_ the one who seemed vulnerable, his eyes the widest Beth had ever seen them, like he was some kid caught with his hand in the cookie-jar. Beth smiled and came in.

“Sorry, my boss wanted to talk to me” she explained quietly. Daryl shook his head.

“Don’t matter”.

“Was she already asleep when you came in?” he nodded and she leaned in further to look at the old woman, who kept snoring softly, “Do you want me to…?” and she left the question in the air.

“No, no” Daryl muttered, “‘S a’right”.

“Okay” she answered, also whispering. She fidgeted with her hands for a second before she looked at him again, “You don’t have to be stand, you can sit down” and gestured at the armchair beside the bed, “I’ll bring you coffee”.

She exited the room looking for her thermos. She took a plastic cup from the water dispenser and poured the liquid drink carefully.

When she came back, Daryl hadn’t moved a bit. She wasn’t surprised in the least, so she offered him the cup and didn’t make any comment about it.

“Do you have new coffee machine?”

“Oh, no” she smiled bitterly, “I always bring my thermos from my house. It’s dark coffee, but if you want sugar or…”

“Nah, I’m good”.

“Okay” she answered before their voices faded. Beth wondered if things would always be like that between them, if it would be her always saying the last word, or if they’d end up in a silence that was starting to be less awkward and more strange.

However, in that moment the silence couldn’t be described as any of those things. They watched the old woman sleeping, each one deep in their own thoughts. Beth was so deep in hers that she didn’t realize Daryl was looking at her. When she did, she had to contain herself to not be startled by the surprise and returned the gaze. He lowered his eyes immediately and Beth swore she saw a light blush.

 _And I thought I was shy_ , she thought to herself.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Daryl shook his head, still looking at the floor.

“Nothin’. You seem tired” he answered after a few seconds. Beth laughed softly.

“Who, me?” she answered, gesturing at herself, “It’s just I don’t sleep much lately”.

Daryl grunted something and she kept going.

“But don’t worry, I’ll survive. No one dies for sleep deprivation”.

“Actually yeah” he answered, so quickly Beth took great effort in understanding him.

“Huh?”

“You can… you can die from that” he repeated, this time letting his eyes meet hers. Beth smiled.

“It was just a figure of speech. You seem tired too” she commented innocently. He shrugged.

“I never sleep for very long”.

“How come?” Beth asked, genuinely surprised, “I sleep a lot. My dad used to call me marmot because on the weekends I would sleep till noon”.

Beth smiled even more when she saw him turning his head to glaze at her, amused.

“He was right” she said, “I _am_ a marmot”.

Daryl opened his mouth to say something, but suddenly his eyes moved to the right and he went livid. Beth spun around to see what was that had caused that reaction and found Mrs. Dixon staring at them from her bed.

“Daryl?” her voice was barely a whisper that resounded like she had shouted, “Is that you?”

Beth didn’t know what to do. Should she leave and give them privacy, or get Daryl out of the room and get a doctor? Daryl didn’t seem too eager to move or do anything at all. He just stood there, his body so tense that he looked like he was going to snap at any second, without saying anything and stared back at his mom.

 

Beth observed the scene like she was hypnotized, feeling confused the whole time and without being sure of how long everything had happened actually. It could have been hours since Mrs. Dixon raised her arm and tried to reach something until finally she gave up and her wrinkled hand fell with a thud over the mattress, as her eyes fluttered close, and then the spell was broken and Daryl started breathing again and his body deflated like a balloon.

Beth swallowed and grabbed him by his forearm softly, guiding him towards the door.

“Come on” she muttered, ignoring the stiffness of his body when she touched him. They walked through the aisle in silence until they reached the break room. Beth was surprised of how easily Daryl let him guide him, like he wasn’t much heavier than her. She set a chair next to him and he fell over it as Beth rushed to get the thermos and refill his cup even though it was almost full. However, that gesture seemed to wake him up, because he blinked and took it to his mouth, drinking a few sips.

Beth sat down beside him and leaned her elbows in the table, observing him patiently until he finally dropped the cup in the table and returned her the glare.

“Are you okay?” she was surprised that one instant he was paralyzed and the next one he was nodding so strongly, but she nodded too and let it go, “Sometimes she has lucid moments. She remembers things, fragments of her life, but she’s usually locked up in her own world. But… she’s still her”.

Daryl nodded again and she sighed.

“I know it must be hard, but… we have to keep trying”.

This time, he frowned.

“Trying?”

“Yeah. No matter what happens, we’ll deal with it” Beth affirmed.

Daryl looked at her in a way that she was unable to decipher. His hair covered lightly his eyes and she had a lump in her throat that disabled her to talk. Her hands stopped fidgeting in the table and it seemed like suddenly they had exchanged roles and now was her the one stiffening.

“Beth!” they both turned when Tanya, one of her colleagues, appeared at the door, smiling, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but it’s already seven and I thought you would want to know”.

Beth blinked, confused, until finally Tanya’s words clicked in her head.

“Oh” she said, looking awry at Daryl, “Okay, thank you for warning me, Tanya”.

“No problem” she assured, “See you tomorrow”.

“See you tomorrow” Beth answered. She dropped her hands on her lap and turned to smile at Daryl.

“What happens at seven?”

“My shift is over for today”.

“Already?”

“Yep, this shift thing is a little bit chaotic. We have schedules, but maybe someday I see that someone got their shift reduced and I have to cover for them or vice versa” she answered, trying to feign normality despite the blush in her cheeks.

He nodded and stood up at the same time as Beth. They started walking to the entry without talking and Beth tried to stop herself to not wringing her hands nervously.

“Thank you so much for coming today, Daryl. It means a lot to her” Beth said, smiling as calmly as she could. The first peals of thunder could be heard in the distance, and when she turned her head momentarily she checked that the sky was completely covered up by thick, dark clouds.

Daryl raised his head and looked at her and then at the entry.

“Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.

“No, I’m good, it’s just drizzling” she had not finished saying it and a new peal of thunder sent a much more powerful rumble through the nursing home’s walls. Daryl raised an eyebrow and she couldn’t help but laugh softly, “Well, I guess I could use a lift, but, won’t we get wet anyway in the bike?”

“I took the truck” he answered, waving lightly the keys to confirm his understatement, “I didn’t want to get soaked either”.

“How did you know it was going to rain?” she asked, and he shrugged, “Your hunter skills and everything?”

Another shrug.

“Alright” she nodded, “Can you wait two minutes? I’ll go change my clothes”.

He grunted as an answer and she rushed to staff room to pick up her clothes. She switched them at full speed and had to tell herself that jumping wasn’t a very mature action. She told herself that she was being ridiculous. Daryl was being nice to her, period. It was logical that he offered to give her a lift if it was pouring.

 

Beth had to practically jog to not get soaked, keeping her jacket above her head, while Daryl just gave two large steps to get to the truck. He started the car and neither of them said anything. Beth left her wet jacket in her lap and rested her head against the back of the seat, sighing.

He jumped slightly when he heard the first few notes of a song, and noticed that Beth looked as surprised by the radio.

“If you want to change-” he started, but she shook her head to cut him off.

“I like this song” Beth answered, smiling softly. She rested her head again and looked through the window while the music flooded the cab, accompanied by the sound of the rain outside.

 

She hadn’t even realized she was humming until she felt Daryl’s eyes on her. She shut up immediately and turned her head right when he moved his eyes away and pretended to be focused on the road, even though the blood was starting to stain his cheeks.

“I like Daughter very much. She’s one of my favorite singers, and I just love this song” she explained, trying to relieve both of them of that absurd embarrassment, “Do you know her?”

He shook his head and Beth’s smile widened.

“Her songs… they always have lyrics that mean something, that aren’t just things that rhyme to entertain, you know? They’re beautiful, but they’re also really sad. I like the idea of something being sad and pretty at the same time” she felt ridiculous as soon as the words slipped past her lips, but Daryl didn’t mock her, but he looked at her intently and then he turned his head again, provoking Beth to flush this time.

Finally, she smiled and started singing again, this time with her eyes on him the whole time.

 

_So please just blow out all the candles, blow out all the candles_

_“You’re too old to be so shy”, he says to me so I stay the night_

_It’s just a young heart confusing my mind, but we’re both in silence_

_Wide-eyed, both in silence_

_Wide-eyed, like we’re in a crime scene_

_…_

 

* * *

 

When the truck finally stopped in front of her apartments building, Beth smiled.

“Thank you so much for giving me a lift”

“S’ nothing” Daryl said, as always as Beth thanked him something. She shook her head while she giggled.

“Yeah it is” she countered, “Thank you” she said, this time in a much lower whisper, her eyes fixed on him. Daryl returned the glare with the same intensity and nodded.

“You’re welcome”.

Beth grinned and opened the door.

“Now I have to invite you to go out for another coffee for this” she said in a casual way. He huffed softly.

“Nah” he answered and Beth felt like she was paralyzed. Daryl raised an eyebrow, “Innit my turn?”.

She felt the air escaping from her lungs.

“Yeah, I guess” she said with a teasing smile. She thought she had seen how the corners of his mouth curved slightly before she got out of the car, “Bye, Daryl”.

 

She practically jumped while she climbed the stairs, happiest than she had ever been in her life. She started looking for her keys in her bag, dancing while she put the key in the lock, and frowned when it didn’t open. She tried again, but it was the key which didn’t fit. She was sure that was the one, she had lived enough time there to know that. She tried with others just in case, but she didn’t succeed. Suddenly, the door opened and she found Len in front of her with his arms crossed.

“What do you want, Beth? You’re making a lotta noise” he said, like it was the most natural thing to say.

“What are you doing here?”

“This is my house”.

“No, I rent this apartment. You can’t come in whenever you want and… have you changed the lock?”

“Yeah” he answered.

“Why?” but Len simply shrugged.

“I wanted to”.

Beth froze, too shocked by the absurdity of the situation to react properly. That was her apartment. That was her home. He couldn’t get in as if nothing and change the locks.

“Len” she started, “you _can’t_ do this”.

“Course I can.  You’ve been, how much, two months without paying me the rent? What do you think I’m some fucking charity service, that I’m gonna let you live in my house for free?”

“I told you that I’d give you every penny on Friday” Beth answered.

“You have the money?”

“Not yet, but-“

“Then get the hell outta here”.

“What are you talking about? This is my home! Here are my things, I live here-!”

“I’ll send you your things where you want, and now leave”.

“This is illegal”.

“Sue me” he replied, smiling, “and I’ll tell how you’ve been taking advantage of my good faith in you during these months. If you violate the contract I can too”.

“Len, please” she muttered, “don’t do this to me”.

He laughed.

“Oh, but there’s another solution, sweetheart” Len answered, raising his hand to caress her face. Beth turned her face immediately, repulsed, “No? Well, then I don’t want you here. Get the fuck outta here or I’ll call the cops”.

And without anything more, he closed the door in her face. Beth stayed staring at the wood for a few seconds, too stunned and indignant to do anything else, just before her fist crashed strongly against the door, hitting it with rage.

“LEN! LEN, OPEN THE DOOR! YOU CAN’T KICK ME OUT! WHERE I’M GOING TO GO NOW? LEN! LEN!”

She thumped the wood a few more times, but there was no response. She extended her fist against the wood, trying to keep the sobs that tried to conquer her under control.

She had nowhere to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	6. Exhaustion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and a letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jen for editing this for me. Love you!  
> Enjoy!

Beth felt like she had just woken up. When she opened her eyes, she realized that Rosita was softly shaking her shoulder.

“What did you say?” she murmured, distracted.

“I asked you if you took inventory,” Rosita said. She frowned and grabbed Beth by her face, “You look sick. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired” Beth answered as she rubbed her eyes and tried to process what her partner had just asked her, “Inventory?.... mm, no, I think I forgot it, sorry”.

“Don’t matter, I’ll do it”.

“No, no, I can do it” Beth insisted, but Rosita brushed her away softly.

“Beth, you should go home. As your friend I have to tell you that you’ve been awful today” she confessed sincerely, and Beth couldn’t help but smile bitterly and contain a sob before she nodded and got out of there.

 

She had been doing fairly well for a week in her efforts to find a new home and other work in order to pay the rent, but it had been in vain. She had been staying in a seedy motel where she only slept and took showers. The most logical thing would have been to stay in someone’s house, but Beth refused to do it. Not because of her pride, but because of the fact that she didn’t want to admit out loud that she didn’t have a home. That would make it even more real. Besides, her options were quite limited, since she was practically new in a small town where she only talked with her coworkers. Even though she was convinced that Lori or Rosita would offer their houses without second thought, Beth hadn’t said a word. Rosita shared an apartment with other two girls, and Beth knew that even if Rosita insisted that there was room for her, that wouldn’t make the apartment bigger. Lori, on the other hand, was going through a rough patch with her family, and Beth doubted that she could feel really comfortable knowing that her friend wouldn’t look at her own husband.

 

So in the last seven days, she had been sleeping for less than four hours a night, spending her waking hours in the nursing home and searching for a new home, and if she was honest, she was exhausted. She wasn’t sure if she could keep going like that for much longer. That being said, she wasn’t going to stop looking for new work or for somewhere to live.

“I think I need a coffee” she heard herself mutter, just to realize a moment later that she didn’t have a coffee machine at the motel, so she couldn’t bring her thermos anymore. She sighed and rested her back against a wall, lost in the incessant hubbub of the workers and the voices of the elderly.

“Beth!” she turned when she heard Tanya’s voice from across the hall, “Mrs. Dixon”.

Beth didn’t need to be told twice. She walked as fast as her tired legs allowed her towards room 412. When she arrived, she found Mrs. Dixon convulsing with a lot more energy than Beth would have ever thought her capable of and screaming unintelligible things while two nurses tried to hold her to let the doctor inject her with a sedative.

Molly, one of the nurses, raised her head to see Beth standing in the doorframe, and a relieved expression crossed her face.

“Thank God” she panted, smiling weakly while she kept trying to immobilize one of the arms of the old woman who was squirming, almost howling, “I can’t do this anymore”.

“What happened?” Beth asked horrified by the yelps that the woman wouldn’t stop. The doctor lightly pushed the plunger to make sure that there wasn’t any air left in the syringe and approached the bed.

“It was my fault” another girl with waving voice said. Beth wasn’t able to remember her name at that second, but she knew the girl was relatively new at the nursing home. She was Donna’s replacement when the woman retired, “I was gonna move a box from her bedside table to put her lunch there and I’ve spilled everything”.

It was then when Beth noticed the mess on the floor. All the pictures that Mrs. Dixon had saved and carefully wrote on were now scattered all over the carpet, half of them soaked because of the spilled water. Beth felt her heart break at the desperation of the woman, who wouldn’t stop moving as the doctor held her forearm strongly and injected her with a sedative. It wasn’t long until her movements started losing intensity and her eyes were closing heavily, falling back into the mattress with a thud.

“I’m going to clean this” the girl murmured, bending down in front of Beth, “It’s a disaster; I’ll have to put most of this in the trash-”

“No,” Beth said suddenly, cutting the girl off. The nurse looked at her, confused, “Leave this to me, I’ll dry them out”.

“But they’re ruined-”

“It doesn’t matter. We can’t just throw them all out. It’s her whole life” she answered softly. The nurse nodded and everyone except for Beth abandoned the room, leaving her alone with the old woman, who was now sound asleep.

 

With a deep sigh, Beth started taking tissues from the bedside table and tapping gently the photos to get rid of the water, before she lifted them carefully and started blowing on them. Then she put them on the wooden surface of the woman’s dresser. There were some that were definitively irrecoverable: the pass of the time and the water had caused the ink to fade and bleed, making it impossible to make anything out. But there were others which hadn’t been so damaged by the mess. Those were the ones that Beth managed to separate and classify, writing down what she could translate from the annotations on Post-Its so she could rewrite them herself as soon as they dried out. Once she finished, she took the most damaged ones and put them in the box again, trying to suppress a whimper. Mrs. Dixon would never be able to remember those parts of her life anymore.

 

She got out of the room towards the entry and she leant on the counter.

“Joan, do we have any clothespins around here?” she asked. The woman blinked and looked at her as if she had grown a second head.

“Why on Earth would we have clothespins here?”

“I need to dry out some paper that got wet”.

“I can give you thumbtacks and an old corkboard to hang them on, but I can’t do much more” the receptionist answered, shaking her head.

“That’s perfect”.

She came back to the room 412 carrying the corkboard and a pack of thumbtacks, and after she checked that the woman was still under the effect of the drugs that had been pumped into her, she sat down on the arm chair beside her bed and got to work. Once she finished pinning the pictures to the board, she stood up and left it leaning against the wall opposite the door, hidden by the bed so no one could see it. It wasn’t like the photographs were a bad thing, but she felt like it wouldn’t be right if someone saw them. They were Mrs. Dixon’s and no one else’s.

 

She closed the door behind her and walked down the aisles, feeling all her worries were returning with twice the intensity as before, and this time, she didn’t have anything to do to distract herself. There was a lump in her chest that seemed to only grow, drowning and smothering her and taking her breath away all at the same time.

 

She didn’t know where she was going to sleep that night. She thought about calling Maggie and asking her if she could stay at her place, but that would mean she would have to use gas that she didn’t have to go and come back, and also admitting that she needed her help. Maggie was a great big sister, but frankly, sometimes she was suffocating. She still remembered everything she had told her the afternoon that Beth announced to her sister that she had plans to move to another town on her own to start working. Maggie didn’t even know about the existence of people like Len or Dawn, but she warned her then that her new life would be nothing like the life that she was used to at the farm. If Beth called Maggie, she’d have to listen to her for the whole day with her “I-told-you-so” and trying to make her go back to the farm. The worst thing was that the other option, returning to her parents, would be the same thing as if she moved with Maggie: her dad had had the same reaction as her sister, and Beth wasn’t going to let them be right that time, no matter how proud that sounded.

But then she realized something, and it was like a stab to her heart.

 

She would have to leave Newborn.

* * *

 

Beth had been in front of Dawn’s office for five minutes, trembling and holding her resignation letter as if it was her salvation and not her end.

“Beth? What are you doing?” Beth flinched so hard that she almost hit her head against the door. She breathed shakily and turned around to face Rosita, who was looking at her with a frown.

“Me? I was… I was just wondering if I should talk to Dawn to… you know…” she had always been a bad liar, but in that moment she wished that she had practiced more.

“She’s not gonna change her mind, Beth” she said kindly, and Beth felt like she was deflating of relief. She hadn’t even needed to make up something.

“Well… there’s nothing else we can do, is it?”

“You know what can cheer you up?” Rosita asked with a grin from ear to ear. Beth shook her head, skeptical. She didn’t think that there could be anything able to make her happy in that moment. Rosita bit her lip and took two steps forward until they were really close, as if she had a big secret. She approached her ear and whispered, “The handy hottie is in the parking lot”.

“Oh”, _oh_ , “I… he’s not gonna come in?”

“I guess he’s waiting for you” she said, smiling so widely that Beth couldn’t believe she wasn’t hurting.

“Keep dreaming” Beth answered, but she was already going to the parking lot. She saw him leaning on his bike, looking at her, and she blushed and moved away immediately, like she was doing something bad. She breathed in deeply and walked toward him decidedly, “Hi”.

“Hi” he answered. He took a few steps forward, but then he stopped and frowned.

“What?”

“Nothin’” he shrugged, and Beth saw the tips of his ears turning red, “You look sick”.

“Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel pretty” she laughed, but her smile faded as soon as she noticed his mortified expression, “Your mom just woke up. If you want I can go in with you before I leave” she continued, trying to feign normality.

“You leavin’ already?” he asked. Beth nodded, “It’s so early though”.

“Well, I’ve been working since half past seven in the morning” she smiled weakly, and tried to look more relaxed than she was when Daryl’s frown deepened, “C’mon, I’ll go with you. You want a coffee?”

“Nah, I’m good” Daryl answered, and Beth didn’t say anything else. They walked toward the 412 and they came in silently, but to their surprise, the woman wasn’t looking through the window as usual, but she had the metallic box in her lap, and her wrinkled hands were wandering in its insides. Daryl and Beth shared a confused look, and then the latter stepped forward and smiled.

“Hello, Mrs. Dixon” she started in a cheerful tone, “How are you feeling?”

But the woman didn’t answer, and as bad as it sounded, Beth was relieved for it. At least there was something which remained yet.

“I’m so sorry about the photos” Beth continued, “I got to dry most of them, but those you have are-”

“What photos?” she heard Daryl’s voice behind her. Beth spun around and found his confused gaze.

“Your mom saves her pictures in a box. This morning there was a little accident and some got soaked”.

Daryl frowned and approached carefully. Beth opened the first drawer and took out the pictures that had survived.

“I tried to rewrite some of the dates n’ stuff, but I’m not sure if I got it all right. Is there any date or something that I wrote wrong?” she asked timidly. Daryl stared at her for a moment before he took the pictures. He looked them one by one, and suddenly he stopped at the last one. Beth couldn’t help but lean on a little bit to see it. A black and white photo of a much younger Mrs. Dixon –maybe around Beth’s age, or even younger- beside a twenty-something man with dark hair and features very similar to Daryl’s.

“He’s your dad?” Daryl nodded, “You kinda look like him”.

Daryl’s head snapped up, and if looks could kill, Beth would be dead on the floor.

“Sorry” she murmured in a rush without knowing exactly why.

“Don’t matter” he answered, but his tone left no doubt that he was still angry. Beth bit the inside of her cheek and made a gesture to take the pictures. Daryl dropped them immediately and she put them in the box again.

“Well, I should get going” Beth said, raising slightly her wrist to look at her watch. Twenty past seven. She had to be fast. Her brother Shawn had set a spare bed for her and he was going to pick her up at half past seven. Beth couldn’t feel any guiltier for asking such a big favor of her brother. Not only was he picking her up to stay at his house almost 30 miles away, but she also made him swear that he wouldn’t tell their parents or Maggie.

“You in a rush?” Beth looked at Daryl and he flushed red, as if he had just realized that it wasn’t any of his business. But she nodded nevertheless.

“My brother’s picking me up. I don’t want to make him wait” she explained. _And I have to hand in my resignation_ , she added to herself bitterly.

“Okay” he replied. Beth managed to smile.

“Good night, Daryl”.

“Good night”.

Beth got out of the room, and she couldn’t help but laugh humorlessly when she realized that that would be the last time she would tell him that.

* * *

 

Beth knocked three times and waited until she heard Dawn’s voice telling her to come in. She opened the door and tried to maintain her composure, holding the envelope tightly to hide the fact that her hands were shaking.

“Oh, hello Beth” the woman greeted her without raising her eyes from some papers, “I thought you had finished your shift for today”.

“Actually, I’m leaving soon” Beth said.

“We can’t afford to pay you any extra hours”.

“I know” she replied tensely. Dawn kept writing something in that huge mountain of papers.

“Then tell me what I can do for you”.

_Give me back my shifts._

_Get me a new house._

_Don’t make me quit my job and leave a town I love just because I can’t get by._

_Just give me back my life._

“The truth is-“

Her voice was cut off by her phone ringing. Dawn raised her eyebrows questioningly and Beth looked at it and saw that it was Shawn.

“Sorry, it’s important” she excused herself. Dawn made a gesture with her hand.

“Take your time”.

Beth opened the door and got out quickly.

“Hi, what’s up? I was just about to talk with my boss”.

“Bethy, I have to tell you something, but you have to promise me you’re not going to get mad at me”.

“You told her,” Beth whispered, burying her face in her hand. She heard him let out a whimper.

“I didn’t want to, but Mags appeared when I was gonna go and pick you up and babbling about a fight she had had with that dude Glenn and how she needed to stay for the night, and as soon as she saw the spare bed she started interrogating me and you know I’m shitty at keeping secrets” he said it in a sudden, and Beth wanted to make a frustration noise.

“God. Then what?”

“She called Hershel and he said –he _ordered_ us- to bring you to the farm immediately”.

“No way,” she refused, “That is not gonna happen”.

“That’s what I told him, but you know Hershel and Maggie. I told them that I would do it, but I called you first. I’m sorry, Beth”.

“Don’t worry,” she replied, rubbing her eyes to bring down the exhaustion and the tears, “Actually… I have money to stay in the motel tonight. Tomorrow I’ll make plans, don’t you worry about me”.

“Are you sure? Beth, I can pick you up-”

“Nah,” she cut him off, “really, I can sleep at the motel tonight. I’m tired and you are too and I don’t want you to drive through Georgia because of me when I have a place to sleep”.

There was a heavy silence for a handful of seconds until he finally sighed.

“Just for tonight” he clarified.

“Just for tonight” she promised, “And tomorrow I’ll drive to Atlanta”.

“You better, Greene, or I’ll go looking for you myself” he added in a jokingly tone. Beth smiled.

“I love you, idiot”.

“Love you too, little bug. See you tomorrow”.

“Bye” she muttered. She forced herself to breathe in deeply to stay calm. She didn’t know where she would sleep that night. She barely had any money left and she needed it to get to Atlanta tomorrow. Her only option was to sleep in the nursing home. She tried to console herself with the fact that Dawn would leave soon and no one would realize if she stayed around there and took a nap in the break room’s sofa.

“Beth?” Dawn called her. She blinked several times to avoid spilling any tears and returned to the office, “Everything okay?”

“Yep, everything’s fine. I just came to tell you that… Mrs. Dixon has improved a lot lately. Her son’s visits have helped her. Today she seemed more conscious than usual.”

“And more irascible,” she added, looking at her for the first time since she had came in, “I’ve already been informed about what happened this morning”.

“Oh, that,” Beth answered, “Well, we shouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s a one-time thing. She’s usually much calmer, I can assure you”.

“I’m really happy to hear that” Dawn said, and Beth knew that there wasn’t any truth in that, “Thanks for keeping me updated”.

“No problem”.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Beth looked down at the envelope, “It’s… a letter from one of the elderly. Mr. Cooper. You already know how thankful he is for everything we do for him in here. He just wanted to express it somehow”.

Dawn observed her intently for a few seconds until she nodded and smiled.

“Yes, he’s a good man. Well, Beth, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got things to do…”

“I was already leaving. Good night” she added, closing the door behind her. She looked at the envelope one more time and started tearing it apart, and then she throw the pieces in a bin and went looking for a coffee.

 

It was going to be a very long night.

* * *

 

It was almost ten p.m when Beth peeked into the hallway and made sure that she had heard the door of Dawn’s office opening. The woman closed and locked it, saying goodbye to Joan before she left. Beth sighed, relieved, and stepped into the hall.

“Nurse Greene? What are you doing here?” Beth froze, turning very slowly to find the same trembling girl from that morning.

“I’m doing extra shifts”.

“But Dawn said-”

“Listen” Beth cut her off, “I know that… what was your name?”

“Cathy”.

“Okay, Cathy, you can’t tell her I’m here, alright? I’m doing this because I want to be here. I’m not gonna get paid. I’m not hurting anyone. Why would we ruin it by telling her?”

Beth saw how the girl was conflicted. She knew Cathy wouldn’t say anything as soon as culpability crossed her face.

“Fine, I haven’t seen you” she said finally.

“Exactly” Beth replied, smiling, “Thank you, Cathy”.

“Anytime, nurse”.

Beth nodded one more time before she disappeared down the hallway. She was walking so fast that she didn’t realize that she was about to run into another person. She stumbled back a couple steps from the force of the impact, and when she lifted her head, she found Daryl staring at her. Beth opened and closed her mouth several times like a fish out of water, trying to find the right words. She’d spent the whole night lying, but she didn’t know if she would be able to do it now. Especially if he kept looking at her like that.

“Hi” she babbled when she didn’t find anything else to say.

“Hi” he replied, “I thought your brother was picking you up”.

“He is. He was” she rectified, “He couldn’t. Were you leaving?” she asked, trying to swift desperately the subject. He made an affirmative sound.

“Need a ride?”

“No, it’s okay. You know, I like walking”, _to nowhere._

“I could go with you” he suggested shyly.

“Don’t bother”.

“It’s late”.

“I know” she answered, nervous. Daryl stared at her for a couple seconds more, biting his thumbnail before he nodded.

“Don’t worry” he said suddenly, “Won’t bother you anymore”. And he walked past her.

_What?_

Beth blinked, confused. Had she said something? She grabbed him by his forearm to stop him.

“You weren’t bothering me”.

“If you don’t want me to-”

“That’s not it” she hurried to assure, “Believe me, that is _not_ it”.

She blushed a little, hoping he didn’t read too much into her last sentence.

“Then what is it?”

Beth dropped his forearm and looked down. She couldn’t lie to him when she wasn’t looking at him, let alone if he kept staring at her.

“I’ve had some… _problems_ with my landlord” she explained quietly. She could feel his gaze burning holes in her head.

“Oh” he just said.

“Yeah” Beth whispered.

A couple of seconds more passed that seemed eternal to Beth, until his voice finally broke the silence again.

“I’ve got an extra room” he said. Beth raised her head and stared at him as if he were crazy.

“You’re not suggesting I sleep in your house” she replied. Daryl shrugged.

“What’re you gonna do? Sleep here?” _that’s exactly what I was planning to do._

“It wouldn’t be right” she shook her head, “It wouldn’t be appropriate”.

“I didn’t ask you to marry me” he countered, “But it wouldn’t be appropriate to let someone sleep in the street if you can avoid it either”.

Beth bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted the blood on her tongue. Her exhaustion was taking over and the only thing she wanted to do was to lay on the ground and cry, but she couldn’t do that. She was a grown woman and she had to face her problems.

And he was offering a solution. “Alright” she muttered. She looked up at him again, “Alright” she repeated out loud. He nodded.

“A’right, then”.

“Wait” she stopped him. He turned around, “I have conditions”.

Despite the tension and the tiredness that reigned her in those moments, she couldn’t help but marvel when she saw the shadow of a smile on his mouth, and immediately afterwards, a snort.

“I thought the owner set the conditions”.

“I’m not gonna stay at your house like that. I don’t need anyone to take care of me and I don’t want to owe you such a big favor” she said as if he hadn’t interrupted her, “I’ll pay rent”.

“Don worry bout it”.

“Well, I will worry about it.” she replied immediately. Daryl looked at her for an instant before he shrugged.

“Do what you want” he countered, before he turned around again and kept walking, “But hurry up”.

Beth hurried in following him through the carpeted aisle. She took her purse from the break room and waited until Joan bent down to search something to scamper toward the exit. Daryl raised an eyebrow questioningly, but he didn’t say anything.

She froze in the middle of the parking lot though when she realized that he was walking towards his Triumph.

“We’re going on that?” she muttered. Daryl looked at her with an amused expression.

“You scared?”

“No, but I’ve never ridden on a bike” she replied. He smiled slightly.

“Well” he answered as he climbed on, “I think it’s bout time you do”.

And he extended his hand to help her. Beth accepted it, but she barely needed to lean on it to climb on. She had grown up on a farm, surrounded by horses. She knew _something_ about how to ride.

 

What she _didn’t_ know, or expect, was that suddenly the bike would let out a roar that made her jump and think, alarmed, that they might have woken up the whole state.

“Hold on tight” he warned her above the noise. She nodded and surrounded him with her arms, holding on as lightly as she could manage. However, when he moved his wrist and suddenly they weren’t on firm ground but _flying_ , sailing over that gray sea of pavement, Beth didn’t have any option but to hold onto him as tightly as she could and pray for the wind to not throw her to the ground. And with that excuse, she tightened her arms around his torso and rested her cheek in the wings of his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	7. Partners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jen for editing this chapter. You're awesome, but you already know that.  
> Enjoy!

Daryl flipped a switch and the room lit up. Beth moved forward shyly, taking hesitant steps to the inside, and she found a small living room with all walls painted white and only furniture that was absolutely necessary. There was a tiny kitchen behind the living room, and beside it was the bathroom. Behind the sofa there were two closed doors that Beth guessed were the rooms.

Daryl took a few steps, throwing his vest on the couch and turned around to look at her, looking more uncomfortable now that they weren’t on his bike anymore.

“My room’s that one” he said, pointing to the door on the right, “The kitchen, bathroom, this. ‘S not much” and he shrugged. Beth smiled.

“Thank you very much” she answered sincerely. Daryl shrugged again.

“There are towels in my closet, I’ll get you a couple” he explained, “And…”

He seemed to have nothing else to say, and Beth felt for him.

“I think I’ll take a shower before I go to bed” she nodded. Daryl opened the door on the left and made her a gesture to come in, and so she did. It was a small room with an even smaller window, a bed with a falling-apart armchair and a bedside table. Beth felt like she was in Rosewood again.

“I’ll leave so you can…” he muttered before he disappeared. Beth dropped her purse on the bed, and a few seconds later, Daryl reappeared in the doorway with a towel in his hand and offered it to her. Beth stretched her arm to take it and smiled, “I’m gonna go to bed now”.

“Okay,” she answered nodding, “I won’t be loud, I promise”.

“Don’t matter” he countered, “If you need something…”

“A’right”.

Daryl closed the door to give her privacy and she stayed bent over her purse for a few seconds, until she finally sighed and fell full force on the bed. She was exhausted and the only thing she wanted to do was to close her eyes and let sleep take over her body. However, she forced herself to gather her remaining strength and stand up again to look for her clothes. She mentally reminded herself that she had to go to the motel to pick up the rest of her stuff and call Shawn to tell him that she was staying in Newborn, and suddenly, in spite of the stress that had been suffocating her, she felt an unexpected surge of joy. She wouldn’t have to leave.

If Daryl agreed to rent her room, that is.

* * *

 

Beth opened her eyes the next day brusquely, thinking that she had to get up and go to work, and then she remembered it was Sunday and she had the day off, and buried her head back in the pillow. It took her a few seconds to realize that she wasn’t on her bed or in her room, and when she did, she snapped her head up so suddenly that she hurt her neck.

She looked around her wearily, as if she was expecting to see Daryl sitting in the armchair beside the window, and she rubbed her eyes tiredly. She stretched her arm to search for her phone in her purse and saw that it was nine in the morning and she had twenty missed calls and forty three messages, all from Maggie.

_Beth, Shawn told me what happened. Where are you?_

_Beth, don’t ignore me. If you don’t answer I’ll get worried._

_Beth, I’m gonna call dad and we’re gonna go to pick you up. Don’t make me say it again._

_Bethy, are you there?_

The messages went on and on, each one more suffocating than the previous. Beth felt the overwhelming desire to throw her phone against the wall, but she contained herself and left it again in her purse. She got up and opened the door slowly, trying to not make any noise, but she heard the sound of the water running through the plumbing from the bathroom. Beth didn’t know what to do. She had to get dressed and pick up her stuff, she had to call her family to avoid a SWAT team entering the apartment and tackling Daryl, she had to…

She had to relax.

 

She sighed slowly and sat on the couch as Daryl opened the door. Beth stood up like a spring, and saw how Daryl tried to hide an amused smile.

“Ain’t gonna charge you for sittin’” he said, and she returned to her initial position, blushing.

“Good morning” she muttered, mortified.

“Mornin’” Daryl answered before he headed towards his room. Beth moved forward slightly to look her reflect in the mirror of the bathroom and realized how awful she looked. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and anyone could say just by looking at her that she hadn’t slept properly for weeks. Besides, she was wearing purple pajama pants with white polka dots and a massive lemon yellow t-shirt that could easily fit three Beths, which also had a ripped sleeve.

“God” she groaned. Beth stood up and ran into Daryl again, and she made an effort to feign normality and smile, “I think we should talk”.

Daryl looked at her for a second.

“Bout what?” he asked, confused. Beth blinked before she answered.

“Did you mean it yesterday? You gonna let me stay here?” she encouraged him, as if it was evident.

“You’re the one who was already demandin’ to pay rent” he retorted.

“I know, and that’s non-negotiable” she replied, “but I’d like… well, I don’t know. Would you… have me as your roommate?”

Daryl seemed to look everywhere but her, and suddenly, she saw how his head made the slightest movement up and down, once and so fast that if she blinked she would have missed it, but she beamed a smile of pure relief at him.

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“How much money a month. How much do you pay for the room?” she added when she noticed his expression. Daryl shrugged again.

“I’m rentin’ it too”.

“I’ll pay you half of the rent, then” she proposed, but Daryl shook his head.

“Don’t need so much”

“But it’s only fair” Beth protested. Daryl sighed.

“I need coffee” he said suddenly, and before Beth could reply, he walked to the kitchen, and she found herself following him. Daryl took a little coffee pot and poured himself a mug, before he gestured to the coffee pot.

“Yes, please. Thanks” she added as he started pouring another mug for her. Beth brought the mug to her lips, almost drooling when she smelled the coffee, and she couldn’t help but half-close lightly her eyes before she sipped.

“Sugar?”

“No, that’s perfect, thanks” she shook her head. Daryl sat on the couch and Beth stayed standing, with her mug still steaming in her hand, “So… how much would it be?”

Daryl stared at her for a few instants, before he brought the cup to his lips and drank.

“Two hundred and fifty” he answered after a while. Beth’s eyes widened.

“That’s just hardly half of what I paid for my old apartment!” she exclaimed with a pathetically pitched voice.

“Your apartment was nearer to downtown than mine, was bigger, newer, and besides, you rented the whole of it, not just a bedroom”.

“Daryl” she started again, “no. You know that’s not true. I’ll use the whole apartment, and I can’t pay you as if I would just use one room”.

“Two hundred and fifty” he repeated, “That’s all I’ll be takin’”.

Beth lowered her sight to her coffee, thoughtful.

“You can put a padlock in your door or whatever” he said suddenly. Beth raised her head to look at him, frowning.

“Why would I want to do that?”

Daryl didn’t answer.

“I trust you” she said simply. She realized that Daryl was practically piercing her with his eyes and she returned her focus on her mug, “Anythin’ else?”

“I don’ think so”.

“I’ll pay you the first of each month” she told him, “That’s in…” she tried to remember what day it was.

“Eight days” Daryl finished the sentence.

“Eight days” she repeated, “I think it’d be a good idea if I had a set of keys”.

Daryl nodded and left the cup on the little table beside the couch before he stood up and moved towards her. Beth backed up a few steps, with her heart pounding, until she realized that he was looking for the chair in the kitchen that was right behind her, on which was his vest was hanging. He rummaged in an inside pocket and took out the keys, offering them to her.

“It doesn’t need to be right now” she hurried to add.

“I won’t be back ‘til night. Go get your stuff and leave the door open for when I get back,” he explained, before he took the vest and put it on, “Will you be here?”

“Yeah” she answered immediately as she took the keys that he was offering, “I don’t have to work today”.

“Good” he said, walking to the door. He opened it and stopped for a moment before he turned around to look at her, “See ya later”.

“See ya” she answered, smiling. The door closed softly and Beth stayed in the middle of the kitchen, watching the set of tinkling keys and the apartment that was around her. The first thing she did was to go to her bedroom – _her own bedroom_ \- search for her phone, which was already vibrating, and pick it up.

“Hi, Mag-”

“-OF ALL THE STUPID THINGS YOU’VE DONE, BETH, I SWEAR THIS IS THE WORST! HOW COULD YOU NOT CALL US?”

“-gie. How’re you?”

“HOW AM I? OH, I’LL TELL YOU HOW I AM. I’VE SPENT THE NIGHT TRYING TO TALK TO YOU, WITH DADDY CALLING RICK AT TWO IN THE MORNING TO CONTACT THE POLICE STATION IN NEWBORN, AND YOU-“

“Maggie…”

“AND YOU, MEANWHILE, ARE GOD KNOWS WHERE WITHOUT CALLING ANYONE OR SAYING ANYTHING”.

“Maggie-”

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF NIGHT WE’VE HAD? WE THOUGHT-”

“ _Maggie!”_ Beth shouted. Her sister’s voice stopped and Beth sighed, relieved that she could put her phone to her ear again without becoming permanently deaf, “I’m fine”.

“Where are you?”

“I found a new place” she explained without going into any detail, “Last night I was really busy and I fell asleep as soon as I arrived, that’s why I didn’t call”.

“Dad told you to come back home, Beth”.

“I’m twenty-three, Maggie. I’m old enough to make my own decisions” she countered, in a fiercer tone than she intended. She understood her sister’s worry. Maggie used to notice things faster than most people. Somehow, she would have realized that Beth was in trouble and she should have spent the night awake. Beth could imagine her pacing around Shawn’s house, calling her and thinking about taking the car herself and going to Newborn, “I’m fine”, she repeated.

She heard Maggie sigh of relief.

“Don’t ever do this to me again, Bethy. Please”.

“I’m really sorry” Beth apologized, “Tell everyone I’m still safe and sound. I’m going to finish the move today so I can go to work tomorrow and have all my stuff in here”.

“How did you find a new place so fast?”

“I’m sharing the apartment” she explained, drumming her fingers nervously. She hoped her sister wouldn’t notice that nervousness in her voice.

“With who?”

Damn Maggie.

“Rosita” she replied, trying to sound natural.

“Oh” her sister said, “She’s really nice”.

“Yeah she is” Beth agreed, “Hey, Maggie? I’m in a rush. I’ll talk to you later tonight, kay?”

“You promise?”

“I promise” Beth rolled her eyes.

“Okay, be careful. Love you” her sister told her.

“Alright. Love you too” and hung up, sighing heavily. The truth is Maggie was being pretty patient. In normal conditions, before Maggie met Glenn that is, she would have already showed up in Newborn and demanded to know where Beth was to accept or deny her decision, as if she was still eleven. Beth wondered where that guy Glenn could have been her whole life.

* * *

 

Beth dropped the box of her stuff on the bed. She started putting her things around the room carefully, and then she folded her clothes and left them in the armchair, humming quietly as she moved around the small room. She took out a framed photograph of her family and she smiled before she left it on the bedside table. It was almost eight p.m and it was already dark outside, but she couldn’t hear the typical fuss of the town. She repeated to herself that that building was pretty isolated and that it was normal, but it still felt weird to be in a strange room and at the same time have it be so familiar. It reminded her of the farmhouse where she could hear the steps of her family and the murmurs of the countryside.

She opened her purse and searched for her wallet, counting the money quickly. She had taken all of her savings from the bank, and in total, she had one hundred twenty five dollars and thirty cents. She still had to get one hundred fifteen to give Daryl in eight days. She consoled herself thinking that she would get paid in three days, and then another feeling of anguish invaded her: the car. She would have to sell it, but selling it meant that she would have to find another way to go to work every day.

She felt that already familiar knot in her chest, and suddenly, she hard a knock in the door. Beth went to the entry to open it and saw Daryl standing in the doorway.

“Sorry, I didn’t remember you didn’t have your keys” she explained, and moved so he could come in. Daryl looked at her but said nothing.

Beth went to her room again and kept ordering her things, humming softly. She raised her head when she saw Daryl there, shifting his weight from one leg to another constantly.

“You ain’t gonna have dinner?” he asked, and immediately an explosion of color invaded his face. Beth contained a smile, knowing that that would make him even more uncomfortable, and instead she shook her head softly.

“I’m not really hungry” she answered. Daryl nodded and left hurriedly, and Beth set the last thing in a drawer before she dropped the empty box behind her bed. She got out and found Daryl sitting on the couch, watching TV with a can of beer. Beth approached him and sat beside him without a word, pretending that she was focused in whatever he was watching.

 

It took a few minutes until he finally stood up suddenly, startling Beth.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m gonna order a pizza. You sure you’re not hungry?” and Beth shook her head again, despite the silent pain in her stomach.

 _No_ , she said mentally _, it’s one thing that he’s lettin’ you stay here and it’s another to take his food. I’ll eat tomorrow at work._

But even so, when the pizza arrived almost an hour later, and Daryl sat again and opened the box on the table, a delicious smell invaded her nose and her mouth watered. She bit the inside of her cheek and kept looking at the screen.

A few minutes later, she felt something on her lap, and when she looked down, she found a plate with a slice of pizza on it.

“I’m not hungry” she repeated, but her stomach betrayed her with a growl and he raised an eyebrow. Beth blushed and gave in, picking up the plate from her lap, “Thanks”.

They kept eating silently, Beth really slowly, trying to relish that slice and fool her stomach.

“Do you want some?” she heard him ask, and when she turned her head he found him waving the can of beer.

“I don’t drink” she answered. Daryl stared at her.

“Why?”

“My dad has always been really strict about drinkin’” she explained briefly, “And now that I can, I don’t feel the need to. Guess I’m used to it now”.

Daryl nodded, but he didn’t answer. They resumed watching TV until Beth saw that it was almost eleven and stood up to take the plate to the kitchen and wash it. She turned lightly to look at him, but he was focused on the screen. Well, that was how it looked, because suddenly he moved his head slightly and Beth turned again in a rush, pretending to be drying the plate.

“Good night” Beth muttered.

“G’night”.

And she entered her room again as her phone started vibrating over the bedside table. Beth took it quickly, preparing her monologue of “I’m fine-I’ve eaten-I’m still alive” and she picked up without looking who it was:

“Hey” she said, “I’ve already had dinner and-“

“Beth” she heard the voice of Rosita in such a serious tone that Beth stopped halfway between sitting down in the bed and standing up, “Mrs. Dixon had a heart attack”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	8. Apologies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and a night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jen for editing this for me. You're just something else.  
> By the way, I don't know what I did but suddenly chapter 8 was repeated. Idk how it happened because there were comments in this new chapters so I have no idea. Anyway, here it is again.  
> Enjoy!

The following hours were chaotic for Beth. She had hung up without saying anything to Rosita, she had thrown herself against the door and she had got out with shaky hands and her heart hammering heavily in her chest. Daryl had turned when he’d heard the force of her exit, and his expression had changed when he had seen her. She remembered perfectly how his face had paled when she had told him.

 

As soon as they came, they found that they couldn’t see her. A nurse stopped them and told them that they were trying to stabilize her, and until she was out of any danger they couldn’t let them in. So Beth sat in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs and thereupon, Daryl did the same. Beth shook her head and smiled weakly:

“You have work tomorrow”.

“So do you,” he replied, “’M not gonna leave you here by yourself”.

And Beth pretended that her heart didn’t race a little bit, even in those circumstances, and looked away, unable to stand his gaze.

 

The night went on, but still no one told them anything. Beth, nervous as she was, stood up at least fifteen times to do _something_ , to try to alleviate the ease the pressure in her throat, to ignore the fact that Daryl’s immobility made her more nervous. The man hadn’t moved a muscle since they had arrived except to lean back in his chair.

 

Beth wasn’t idiot. She didn’t need a nursing career to know that if they hadn’t informed them of anything yet things weren’t going well, and she didn’t need to be a fortuneteller either to know that something was wrong with Daryl, and not only because of the current situation. It wasn’t normal for a human being to be so still. He looked ahead and didn’t open his mouth. Beth tried to make him say something, but he didn’t answer or he just emitted a grunt that meant absolutely nothing.

 

It was almost six in the morning. The first rays of dawn started to enter through the windows, bathing the sterile hospital waiting room in a soft orange. Beth was sitting on the floor next to Daryl’s chair, with her head leaning against the wall and her eyelids as heavy as concrete blocks.

It was then, just when she was about to close her eyes and let sleep take over, she heard a voice.

“Katherine Dixon’s relatives? Katherine Dixon?” Beth’s eyes snapped open and she stood up, shaking a hand weakly.

“Us” she said, and felt how Daryl moved beside her, but she didn’t turn around to look at him. The nurse approached them.

“Are you Mrs. Dixon’s family?”

“’M her son” Daryl grunted.

“You’re her daughter-in-law?” the nurse asked, writing something down. Beth flushed and shook her head.

“No, no, we aren’t…” the nurse raised an eyebrow, “I take care of her in the nursing home”.

“You can only enter if you’re a direct relative” the woman continued without looking away from the paper.

“Then write that we’re a couple, who cares” Daryl growled, and Beth felt her face burning, “It’s not like no one’s gonna interview us”.

The woman seemed to be ready to argue with him, but she closed her mouth again and nodded, frowning.

“Ten minutes. She’s sleeping and the noise isn’t good for her” she said before she left quickly. Beth turned around and looked at him, but Daryl was still focused on the floor.

“We should get going then” she commented gently. It took a whole minute until he finally decided to raise his head and gaze at her.

“’M not gonna go in” he answered simply. Beth went still.

“Why not?” but he didn’t say anything else, “Daryl, she’s your mom”.

“I don’ need you to always fuckin’ tell me that, I know she’s my mom” he practically barked, and she backed up instinctively, getting angrier and angrier as time went on. She clenched her firsts and bit her tongue to hold back the words that were struggling to get out of her mouth, but she couldn’t help it.

“It’s obvious you do need me to keep tellin’ you if you’re not even gonna see her” she countered, and that seemed to be the last straw for him. He stood up suddenly, startling her, and looked her right in the eyes.

“Listen now; I’m the one who’s lived with her. You think you know her? You think you know me?” he grunted, and Beth felt her blood burn. She raised her chin and frowned.

“I know she’s a good person. I know you are too. And I also know that you can’t hate her for the rest of your life, Daryl”.

“You don’t know shit”.

“Then why are you still here?” Beth retorted, and he seemed to be momentarily confused by her words. He relaxed his brows lightly, just to frown more strongly.

“Leave me alone, girl” he grumbled before he spun around and left striding. Beth stayed there, watching him go with her face red from the anger and her fists so clenched that her knuckles were turning white.

She took a little bit to pull herself back. She inhaled deeply, calmed down, and then she walked towards the intensive care unit.

 

When she found her, hidden by one of those curtains, she felt her heart sank. The old woman was cased and unconscious, lying in her bed like a rag doll, with only the sound of the respirators. Beth felt sick in her stomach. She approached the bed, careful to be silent, and stood beside her.

“Mrs. Dixon” she muttered softly, “It’s Beth”.

She didn’t expect her to answer, but she kept talking nevertheless.

“I just wanted you to know that I was here” and she took a wrinkled hand in her own.

She didn’t know how much time she spent watching her sleep, checking the vital signs monitor every so often, making sure she didn’t detect any strange sounds, but suddenly she heard someone pulling back the curtain.

“Joan” Beth murmured, surprised. She knew Joan was one of the few people in the nursing home that had always defended her, but she wasn’t close to her, or at least, that was what Beth thought, “What’re you doin’ here?”

“It’s not like we’re best friends, but I care about her” she answered, almost as if she could read her mind, “I stayed with her in the ambulance, but then I had to go back”.

Beth nodded and smiled.

“Thanks for doin’ that”.

“You don’t need to thank me. I told you; I like her” but she returned her the smile. She approached Beth and stared at the old woman, “It’s a relief to see her okay again”.

Beth swallowed, trying to suppress the knot in her throat.

“I didn’t know she had a cardiac illness” she muttered.

“She doesn’t” Joan replied, in a harsh tone that Beth didn’t miss.

“Then what-”

“That bitch is gonna take us all down” Joan said quietly, and Beth couldn’t help but take a step back. There was a gleam in the woman’s eyes that Beth hadn’t seen before, “She’s going to lead us to the ruin”.

“Joan, you’re scaring me” Beth admitted. Joan moved her sight from the old woman to look at Beth, and suddenly, her expression softened.

“I’m glad that there’s still good people like you, Beth” and she smiled slightly before she grabbed her fondly by her arm, “I should go home and get some sleep, and so should you. See you later?”

Beth nodded, confused, and Joan left.

 

_What was she talking about?_

* * *

 

It was almost seven o’clock when Beth arrived at the apartment and realized that Daryl had the keys. Letting out a sigh of resignation, she raised her hand and knocked three times. A few seconds passed until the door opened and she found Daryl in front of her. However, neither of them looked directly at the other. They were both still mad, but when Daryl moved away and turned around so Beth could come in, she knew that she didn’t want to stay like that, not for another moment. She had never liked arguing with people, or getting her nose in others’ business, but then, why did she always have to fight with him over the same thing?

“Daryl” she called him, and he stopped just an instant.

“I have to go to work” he answered.

“I know it’s not any of my business and I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I…” she swallowed, “I thought you were improving your relationship with your mom. I’m sorry I pressured you and I’m sorry that I spoke to you like that. I didn’t doubt for a second that you cared about her”.

“You ain’t so wrong, really,” he shrugged, “I’m the one who spent years without seein’ her”.

“But you had your reasons”.

“No” he replied immediately, “I just didn’t want to”.

“Oh”.

“I get why they called you and not me” Daryl continued. Beth bit her lower lip, feeling guilty.

“And… sorry about that too” she apologized, “I… I wasn’t sure that-”

“As I said” he interrupted her, “don’t matter”.

“But it does matter” she muttered, “I want you to know that if I didn’t file you as a relative it’s because I didn’t want to just throw that on you. I didn’t know how things were between you and her and maybe you wouldn’t want… maybe you…” she bit the inside of her cheek and lifted her head to find that he was already staring at her, and he was doing it in a way that made her shiver. Finally, he nodded, but he didn’t add anything.

“Coffee?” Daryl asked suddenly, and Beth muttered an affirmative answer. They moved towards the kitchen, and while she sat down in a chair and he put a mug in front of her, he started speaking again, “My parents… they didn’ really pay any attention to me or my brother when we were young. Then Merle left and I stayed there”.

Beth had the feeling that Daryl wasn’t telling her everything. It wasn’t like he was lying –Daryl didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d lie over something like that- but there was a part of her that couldn’t stop shouting that there was something else behind that. However, she didn’t comment and smiled when he sat beside her.

“Mm” she breathed when she left her mug in the table again, “You know, I used to drink super sweet coffee, but since I started working in Rosewood I’ve got used to drink it without sugar”.

“I hate sweet coffee” he answered, “Doesn’t taste like coffee, just sugar”.

Beth giggled.

“I guess you’re right” she looked at her wristwatch and saw that it was half past seven, “I should start getting ready for work. I leave in an hour” Daryl nodded and she stood up.

 

She was about to close the door of her room when Daryl spoke again.

“Sorry for being a dick”.

Beth smiled.

“Don’ worry ‘bout it” and closed the door, containing a little noise of happiness.

* * *

 

Rosita was leaning against the reception desk when Beth entered. Her friend raised the sight from some papers she was reading and approached her with a worried look on her face:

“Have you seen her?” Rosita asked, and Beth nodded, “How is she?”

“Doctors said she’ll recover” Beth replied. Rosita let out a sigh of relief.

“I know Joan stayed with her, but after that I don’t know anything. You should’ve seen Dawn, pretending to be so concerned when the ambulance arrived”.

“Rosita, speaking of Joan, I-”

“Espinosa!” doctor Jensen called her. Rosita huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Tell me later. Satan’s looking for me”.

“Rosita” she whispered harshly, looking discretely at the doctor, but Rosita just smiled and winked at her.

Beth sighed and headed towards the break room to see the chores board.

 

Hours later, while she was getting ready to leave, a voice stopped her. When she turned around, she found Lori walking towards her.

“Hi” she greeted her, smiling, “I didn’t see you today”.

“Are you living here?” she asked suddenly, and Beth paled.

“What?”

“Your dad called Rick the other night” _Lord, please no,_ “He was worried because he said that you had no home and then you had disappeared. After that he called again to say that you were staying with Rosita. I believed it, but then I remembered that Rosita has no room in her apartment and I found a bag with clothes where we keep the medicine and-”

“Lori” Beth cut her off, “I’m not living here. I have a home”.

The woman seemed to deflate with relief, but she started asking questions again.

“Where are you living now? Beth, you should’ve told me. You know I’ll always have room for you”.

“But it wasn’t necessary” she replied, “I’m… okay, listen, you gotta keep this secret, alright?”

Lori nodded, and Beth moved closer to her, “I’m sharin’ an apartment with Daryl” she whispered, and Lori stared at her, “Don’t be thinkin’ anythin’ weird. I found him here the same night my dad called Rick and he found out that I was gonna stay here for the night and he offered me an extra room at his place. So I rentin’ it now”.

“Daryl” Lori repeated, incredulous, “Daryl Dixon”.

“Yeah, Daryl Dixon. Mrs. Dixon’s son”.

“Beth, but you…” she seemed to be trying to organize her thoughts, “Then last night, you two slept together?”

“No!” she clarified quickly, “No, I’ve already told you that there isn’t anything between us”.

“Why do you sound so disappointed?” a small smile appeared in her friend’s lips, and Beth rolled her eyes.

“He did me a massive favor, and yesterday, with all that happened with his mom, I acted like a nosy idiot. But we’re okay now”.

“Oh, now you sound like a couple”.

“Shut up” Beth countered, flushed, “And you can’t tell anyone”.

“I promise” Lori assured, “But I think you should tell Rosita, so she won’t be surprised when she finds out that you’re ‘living with him’”.

Beth nodded, and Lori hugged her and kissed her head.

“Everything’s gonna be alright, Beth”, she said, “Don’t worry”.

Beth closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Lori was her friend, but sometimes she felt like she was like her second mother too, and being so far from her family, the fact that she had her now was a blessing.

She leaned more against her and smiled, silently thanking her for saying the right thing now that she needed it.

* * *

 

“What’re you doin’ here?” Beth asked, standing in the middle of the parking lot. Daryl shrugged.

“You’re not gonna come back walkin’, are you?” the truth is, he was right. She lived a lot further now, and walking down certain streets at night wasn’t a good idea.

“Well… thanks” she said, and she climbed up in the truck. Daryl followed her and started driving, and while he did, Beth turned on the radio, “I’m gonna stay the night with your mom. If you’re not gonna go out tonight, I could take the keys so I can come back without wakin’ you up”.

“I already made you a copy” he commented as if nothing, and rummaged in his pocket until he found the keys and giving them to her, “But you ain’t gonna need ‘em. Not tonight, at least”.

“How come?” Beth said.

“I’m gonna see her too” he answered, but Beth was already shaking her head.

“No, Daryl, you don’t have to. I meant it, I don’t want to pressure you”.

“I’m doin it ‘cause I want to” he pointed out, “Besides, I think it was good for me. Kinda”.

Beth smiled and fixed her gaze on the keys in her lap.

“Okay, but this time you can’t be shoutin’ in a hospital at six a.m” she countered playfully. Beth swore she saw the corners of his mouth turned up lightly.

“I’ll try”.

Beth’s smile widened and she started singing along with the radio.

 

_I really, really, really, really, really, really like you_

_I want you, do you want me, do you want me too?_

_I really, really, really, really, really, really like you_

_I want you, do you want me, do you want me too?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	9. Deal with the devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and hospitals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not been edited yet, but it's one of my favorites. From this point, everything starts getting funnier to write and I just can't wait to update! Please ignore every possible mistake.  
> Enjoy!

Two weeks had passed since Mrs. Dixon had been taken to the hospital, and even though she was a lot better, doctors didn’t want her to be discharged yet. They said it wasn’t safe for her to come back to the nursing home if her heart was still so weak. Beth kept visiting her, but she didn’t stay every night anymore since she had to work the next day.

 

That morning, Beth was in the kitchen, preparing some coffee as she hummed while Daryl took a shower. Their deal had turned familiar quickly between them: Beth felt no longer any weirdness in living there, but she moved from one room to another as if she had lived there her whole life. She had brought the rest of her stuff and she had adapted swiftly, but then again, she hadn’t had another choice: work took most of her time.

 

Beth could only find one defect in their agreement: it was becoming more and more complicated for her to dissimulate how much she liked Daryl. She was positive he had noticed how long she took to look away when they finished talking, or the way she couldn’t help being nervous when he was too close or half grinned. If she wasn’t Beth, if she was another girl with more confidence, more attractive and determined, she would’ve found a way to attract his interest, but she was just Beth Greene, and shyness was part of the package.

 

Besides, what could Daryl possibly see in her? Just such a messy girl that she hadn’t been able to keep her house, a nosy girl who didn’t stop trying to talk about his past, a _kid_ who wasn’t able to keep her life in order.

 

Daryl could never be interested in someone like her. No way.

 

That’s why when that morning he got out of the bathroom, already dressed, and he found Beth serving two cups of coffee, she wasn’t surprised to his grunt and curtly nod as a response to her “good morning” accompanied by a smile. However, Beth didn’t let that spoil her day. She had a long shift ahead her, and she needed all of her energies and optimism.

Daryl took the coffee and made another sound that Beth interpreted as a “thanks” before he sat. Beth did the same, sitting in front of him while she started drinking her coffee silently.

“I’ll be working late today” she said casually as she left the cup in the table. He said nothing, “So I think I’ll go directly to the hospital to stay for the night, ‘cause tomorrow I just have to work in the afternoon. Lori, a friend from work, said she would give me a lift”.

Daryl just nodded. Beth looked around nervously before she took the cup to her lips and finished her coffee quickly.

“But… you could come to see her too. If you want, of course” she added, getting up to approach the sink and wash thoroughly the cup. She left it in a side of the counter so it would dry up, and then she headed towards her room to take her purse and leave.

However, just before she got out, she turned around to look at him. Daryl was still with his gaze fixed in the table, with one hand holding the cup and the other one put in his leg. Beth waited in case he would say something, but given that he stayed silent, she proceeded to close the door.

“’Kay” he said, and Beth couldn’t help the smile that surged in her lips.

* * *

 

Beth was walking around the dining room, watching the elderly while they had lunch. She stopped by one of them and she bent down lightly.

“You need to eat, Albert” she said affably, but the man shook his head.

“This food’s poisoned” he answered.

“I assure you it’s not. Look, everyone’s eating and nothing happens”.

“’M not gonna let them kill me” he refused stubbornly. Beth repressed a sigh.

“Albert, this food’s been prepared from an external staff. Why would they want to poison you?” the man kept shaking his head, “Okay, if you want, I’ll eat some with you, so you can see that everything’s fine”.

The old man seemed to think about it for a few seconds with a big frown in his face before he nodded slightly.

“Okay” she smiled, taking an unused fork from the table and sticking it in mashed potato, “See? There’s no poison” she continued, taking the fork to her mouth and containing a grimace. She had never tasted such a disgusting mashed potatoes, “And now try to eat a little bit, please, Albert”.

She squeezed his shoulder carefully before she walked towards the water dispenser in the back of the dining room. She poured a big cup until water almost reached the edge, and then she drank it quickly, trying to swallow that revolting paste. She understood then why the poor man thought food was poisoned.

They really had to eat that?

* * *

 

It was almost six p.m. Elderly were in the common room watching TV or playing table games while employees had a coffee in the break room.

“…what it’s not fair is that they reduce our shifts, our salaries, and then they try to convince us that everything’s for our own sake!” Alexis commented, and the rest murmured to show their agreement. Rosita stood up from the couch.

“Yeah, and they don’t give a crap about the elderly! They could just die and it wouldn’t matter ‘cause the powerful ones would still receive their money every month” she added, earning a wave of approbatory comments. Beth stayed in a corner, sipping her coffee silently. She was looking awry at Joan, who was also staying out of the discussion while everyone protested. The woman turned her head and saw her staring, and Beth looked away quickly, knowing she had been caught. She could feel her eyes piercing her even though Beth was now looking at Tony, who was complaining about something while everyone nodded.

Suddenly, an abrupt silence appeared. Beth spun around and found Dawn standing too close to her, looking at her coldly. Beth felt a shiver down her spine.

“Afternoon” the director greeted and all of them muttered an answer. Dawn took a step forward, and then another, until she was in the center of the room, “I’ve learnt that there are some… _disconformities_ with how this nursing home’s being managed”.

Again, silence.

“I’d like to clarify once and for all that here in Rosewood our priority is to provide a dignified life to those who are in their last years, no matter how much benefit we receive from it” looks at Rosita, “and we do all that is on our hand to accomplish this objective. We value the work you perform as employees of this big family, and I wish we could just reward you as you deserve. However, I think we’re all aware of the fact that this isn’t up to me. It’s up to a much bigger management board that takes decisions which I have to communicate, and most of them affect me as well. I truly hate to communicate these decisions, but it’s my work”.

Dawn talked in such a mannered way that she fooled no one. Beth felt rage burning inside her. They all knew that Dawn gave explanations to no one. She was who ran Rosewood.

“However, and since this complaints had been being repeated throughout last months, I think we’ve reached a point where a lot of workers find this workplace unbearable. If someone keeps thinking that way, I’d thank them to be honest and leave. It would be with no doubt a great loss, but… how could we have unsatisfied workers?”

All of them looked at each other, searching for someone to stand up and leave.

“I wouldn’t like to have to decide who’s comfortable and who’s not” she continued with a sharper tone, “I’d prefer it if the person themselves would leave by their own will”.

“You’d love that, right?” everyone turned their heads to stare at Joan, who was now squeezing her empty plastic cup so she could throw it in the trash, “If you didn’t have to do the dirty work”.

If looks could kill, Joan would be already buried six feet under. Dawn smiled at her tensely.

“I’m sorry that you’re bothered by the fact that I don’t enjoy firing people, miss Carroll” she countered acidly. But Joan just shook her head and took a step forward.

“You’d love to see two or three people quitting so you didn’t have to pay any compensations. Your little shifts reducing trick isn’t working anymore, is it? You have to look for new ways to deal with expenses” Joan commented in a dangerously soft tone. She moved forward until she was right in front of Dawn. The whole room was watching expectantly to see what Dawn’s reaction would be.

“If I were you, _miss_ Carroll” she talked pausing, like every word was a stab, “I’d be really careful now. You’re talking with a superior”.

“I know exactly who I’m talking to” she muttered sharply. No one could hear that, but Beth was near them and she could hear it perfectly, “And I know exactly what kind of woman you are, _ma’am_ ”.

Beth could see the sparks of rage coming out of both women’s eyes. Dawn’s jaw was impossibly tense, and Beth noticed how her hands were clenching in trembling fists.

You couldn’t even hear anyone’s breathing. Everyone seemed to be sitting in the edge of the seat, waiting for the next comeback.

Dawn blinked a couple times and turned slightly to look at the spectators.

“Don’t you have work to do?” she said with a severe tone, and everyone rushed to stand up and leave. Beth took the opportunity to stay a little bit more. She saw how Dawn said something to Joan before she stormed out, hitting her in the shoulder when she walked past her. Beth touched her shoulder and approached Joan, whose back was facing her.

“Joan” she started, but the woman turned around suddenly and got out, ignoring her. Beth stayed there, confused.

“Beth!” Tanya called her, “C’mon, I need help to take stock”.

Beth nodded and resumed her walking, while her mind raced around what had just happened.

* * *

 

“Two boxes of Tylenol with… six packs each one” Beth wrote down. Tanya nodded, “So this is the last one”.

“Yep” her coworker agreed, “Now we just have to left all the paperwork and it’s done”.

“Take it to Joan, I’ll put this back in place” Beth offered.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s really light” she assured her, smiling warmly.

“Kay. Thanks, Beth” Tanya said before she took the papers.

“Anytime” she answered. Once Tanya had left, she moved her neck to stretch it and bent down to take the box. It wasn’t really heavy, but she had been moving objects from one place to another and her arms were feeling really tired.

Carrying the box, she approached a shelf and stood on her toes, throwing it quickly so it would fall in the center of the shelf. Beth sighed and backed up, turning around, but then she heard a creek, and when she tried to move again, something hit her on her back.

Beth screamed, but for when she reacted, she was laying on the floor, trapped under the enormous shelf. She tried to move, but then a dull ache ran through her and made her let out a whimper. She tried to calm down, and then the door opened and she heard a voice calling her.

“Beth!” Lori exclaimed. If her ribs hadn’t been so firmly pressed by the furniture, she would’ve sighed of relief, “Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay” she mumbled, “I just need to get outta here”.

“Okay, hold on” the woman tried to move the immense mass, but she couldn’t, “I’m gonna get someone to help me. I’ll be back in a sec”.

And she was gone again. Beth rested her cheek against the carpet and contained her pained tears. She could breathe just difficultly, and fear was taking her over.

“Hey, Beth” Rosita’s voice approached her, “Wow, playing again?”

“Idiot” Beth grunted, containing a whine. She felt some of the weight leaving when they started moving something.

“Okay, take that box. That’s it” Mark’s voice said behind her, “Now take that edge. At the count of three, we lift it. Ready? One, two… three!”

Beth gasped when she felt it moving away from her definitely. She started breathing quickly, in case the shelf fell on top of her again.

“C’mon, Beth, how are you?” Rosita kneeled beside her and tried to grab her arm, but then Beth felt like something was stabbing her and howled, “Fuck”.

“What?”

“Lori, I think her arm’s broken”.

“What!?”

“Hey, calm down” her friend said, “Not a big deal, okay? Can you stand up? We’re taking you to the hospital”.

She felt two arms embracing her, and Beth gritted her teeth to contain the tears while she tried to get up. She breathed shakily when she felt the ground beneath her feet again. She was aching something terrible.

“We should take her to doctor Jensen” Lori suggested.

“No way” Mark replied, “She needs to go to the hospital”.

“I’ll take her” Rosita offered.

The only thing Beth wanted in those moments was for them to _shut up._ Her head was throbbing and she needed to lie down, but at the same time pain was killing her and she knew she couldn’t press her body to any surface without crying.

“C’mon, Beth, slow pace” Rosita whispered, and Beth nodded. She clenched her hands and she leaned against her friend while they moved down the aisle. Some people had heard the noise and had come out of their respective rooms to find the source, and Beth swore her head was going to explode when the first screams started, “It’s nothing, is okay, I’m taking her to the hospital. C’mon, move!”

Beth thanked Rosita silently to be so determined to practically push people away so they could keep moving. However, when they reached the entry, she heard her swear.

“I parked my car a little bit far. Listen, I’m gonna go get it, I won’t take long”

“Don’t worry ‘bout me, I’m okay” Beth said, lifting her head to look at her. Rosita nodded and helped her sit down in one of the seats of the entry before she practically ran towards outside.

Beth sighed and leaned her head against the cold wall, trying to suffocate the pain. She didn’t dare to look at her arm because even though she was a nurse and she was used to these kinds of things, it wasn’t the same seeing them in other people’s bodies than in her own body.

“Beth? What happened to you?” she heard Joan. Beth opened her eyes and found her standing there, dressed with her usual clothes and with her purse.

“A shelf fell over me” she managed to say, and Joan’s eyes widened as she bent over her, “I’m okay, I mean it. Rosita went to get the car so she can take me to the hospital”.

“God” the woman muttered, “how on Earth could a shelf fall over you?”

“I dropped a box, and…” Beth closed her eyes when another stab of pain appeared. She felt Joan’s hand in her knee.

“This nursing home’s older than most patients” Joan grunted, “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’ve been better” Beth admitted, “But that’s okay”.

“No, it’s not okay. I’ll stay with you until Rosita comes back”.

Beth rested her head against the wall again while she felt Joan sitting beside her.

“Joan”.

“Yes?”

“Why are you leaving?” she asked quietly, and they both knew what she meant. She felt her move in her seat.

“Why should I stay?” she answered after a few seconds.

“Because you’re important here” Beth said, turning her head to look at her. Joan smiled bitterly.

“That’s not what Dawn thinks”.

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks, it’s the truth”.

“Yeah, well…”

“Did she fire you?” Beth asked. Joan huffed.

“So she would have to pay me compensation? No, she’s not that dumb. She managed to make me become one of the people who “don’t agree with how this nursing home’s been managed”.

“Joan, what did she do?”

“That bitch knows shit about everyone” she countered angrily, “I know things about her too, but… I cannot prove them”.

“What things?” Beth felt her blood rushing.

“I guess it’s easy to make a deal with the devil when you’re not the one paying the price”, the words hadn’t come out of her mouth yet when the door opened suddenly.

“Beth!” Rosita exclaimed, “Come on, car’s ten steps away”.

“Okay, let’s help you stand up” Joan said. Beth breathed agitatedly as she got up, and then she felt Joan pressing her more to whisper, “Don’t trust anyone”.

“Thanks, Joan” Rosita said, and Joan smiled slightly before she looked at Beth for the last time as Rosita took her slowly to the car. Beth couldn’t turn, but she felt Joan’s eyes fixed in her back.

And she couldn’t help the shivers that ran through her despite the warmth of the evening.

* * *

 

Beth was laying on a hospital gurney, with her head turned so the lights in the ceiling wouldn’t hit her eyes.

“Hi, gorgeous” Rosita’s voice took her out of her daze, “You can’t sleep, doctor’s orders”.

“I’m _fine_ ”

“You’re not fine until doctor says so. How’re you feeling?”

“Tired” Beth admitted, “I’d prefer to be in my own bed”.

“I guess so. I’d prefer to be at home with the handy hottie too” Beth almost got up, “Calm down, I was kidding. By the way, do you want me to call someone? Your parents or-“

“No, no” Beth interrupted her immediately, “I don’t want them to know. They’d probable appear here and demand me to stay at the farm while I recover”.

“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea” Rosita suggested, but she raised both hands in surrender when she saw Beth’s expression, “Or maybe it is”.

“Hi, Beth” doctor appeared behind the curtain with a big smile on his face, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing too worrying”.

“ _Too worrying_?” Rosita mouthed. Beth made a gesture to tell her to shut up.

“Well, that shelf hit you pretty hard” he commented as he looked at her file, “Let’s see, your left arm is broken in two places, and I’m concerned about your spine. The knock in your head provoked a small concussion and it seems that it could have extended to the upper vertebrae, so careful with brusque head movements”.

“’M gonna have to wear a bolster?”

“For now we’re going to put you a cast and keep you in observation for the night. You have several traumatisms in your ribs, so it’s possible that you’ll feel a slight pain when you breathe. We’re gonna administrate you some painkillers so you can sleep without trouble and tomorrow we’ll see how the concussion evolved. Okay?”

Beth nodded and managed to make a small smile.

“Thanks, doctor” she said. He shook his head, still grinning.

“Someone’s coming soon with the cast and everything. If you need something just press the button beside you to call a nurse” and he left again. Rosita smiled at him when he passed by her, and once he had left, her smile became more like _devilish._

“Oh, he was undressing you” she said. Beth frowned.

“I think you’re the one with the concussion”.

“Wow, that’s not really nice” Rosita answered without removing the smile from her face, “If you’re gonna be that grumpy I’m afraid you’ll sleep alone today”.

“You weren’t thinking about staying tonight, were you?”

“You weren’t thinking about me leaving, were you?”

“You have to go to work tomorrow, Rosita. You’re risking your job” she continued, “Especially after today”.

“Beth” Rosita bent over her, “’m not gonna leave you on your own”.

“They’ve kicked Joan out” Beth said suddenly. Rosita moved away slightly.

“What?”

“Dawn… she managed to make Joan quit. God, don’t you see? If she’s able to do that, don’t you think she’ll find anything to make you quit as well? I won’t allow it”.

Her friend seemed to hesitate for a few seconds, but she shook her head again.

“I’m gonna get some coffee, okay?” she said. Beth nodded, “I’ll be back in a sec”.

Rosita got out again, and Beth kept thinking about what she had talked with Joan.

_It’s easy to make a deal with the devil when you’re not the one paying the price._

* * *

 

Beth felt someone shaking her gently, and when she opened her eyes, her heart nearly got out of her chest.

“Daryl” she panted, grabbing the gurney strongly, “What… what’re you doing here?”

“Your friend called me” he answered. Beth noticed Rosita then, standing next to her, still grabbing her arm. Beth looked at her angrily, “You okay?”

Beth nodded and smiled softly.

“It’s not as bad as it seems. Really” she added when he frowned, “Daryl, would you mind if I talk to Rosita privately?”

He shook his head and got out, just as Beth dragged Rosita down until she was right in front of her.

“What. Have. You. Done?”

“I took your cell and I called him”.

“You did what!?”

“You gave me no choice, you’re family was discarded!”

“He wasn’t even an option!” Beth countered exasperatedly.

“Well, he’s already here, isn’t he?”

Beth sighed and dropped her head to the pillow, rendered.

“I hate you”.

Rosita smiled.

“You love me so much” and she went outside to call Daryl. Beth raised her head and tried to listen what Rosita was telling him, but she couldn’t catch anything. A few seconds later, she appeared again, “Well, I’m leaving”.

“What are you talking about?”

“You told me that I can’t risk my job right now” she quoted her dramatically, “And you’re right. Besides, Daryl says he will stay with you”.

Beth’s eyes widened so much that she thought they will come out of her orbits. Rosita bent over and kissed her on the forehead.

“Rest well. Don’t make a lotta noise tonight, this is still a hospital” and she winked at Daryl as she left. They both flushed deeply, and Daryl stood there, more awkward than Beth had ever seen him.

“Hi” she muttered.

“Hi” he answered.

“Hey, you don’t have to stay. I don’t want you having to do that for me, forget what Rosita said, I-“

“I don’t mind staying” he interrupted her, looking with great interest at the floor. Beth felt like blushing even more.

“Oh”.

And she lowered her eyes too. When she raised it again, she found him staring at her.

“You can approach, I’m not contagious” she joked, and he seemed to hesitate before he moved towards her, “You’re gonna end up spending more time in the hospital than in your own place”.

He grinned.

“Don’t matter” he replied. A comfortable silence appeared, and Beth felt exhaustion starting to take her over. She closed her eyes slowly, and it was then, just before sleep claimed her, when she heard him mutter, “And it’s weird bein’ there without you”.

Beth smiled and opened her mouth to answer, but her mind shut off and she fell soundly asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please review!


	10. Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and the morning after the accident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not been edited yet. Please ignore every possible mistakes. This one's probably my favorite right now, but everything I got in mind right now for the next one is too, so I'm a mess.  
> Enjoy!

Beth tapped her fingers against the truck’s armrest while Daryl got into the truck.

“You comfortable?” he asked her.

“Yeah” Beth nodded with a small smile. Daryl started it and soon, they were on their way home, “I have to take more medicines than most elderly from my job”.

Daryl snorted.

“No, I mean it, listen: analgesics for the pain, anti-inflammatory, vitamins… why on Earth do I need vitamins?”

“You tell me, you’re the nurse” Daryl answered. Beth bit her lip and contained another smile.

“I’m gonna end up so groggy that I’ll end up drawing myself through the floor to get to bed every night” Beth continued.

_You could carry me though._

“I think you should go to sleep when we get home, I’ll wake you up” he encouraged her.

“I’m sick of sleeping. I just wanna go back to work”.

“I thought anyone would be happy to be told to rest” Daryl replied. Beth shrugged.

“But I’m not anyone” Beth said, “I love my job. I hate lying on my bed and be lazy. Even when I was little I’d be doing something”.

“A hardworking girl” he commented.

“Yep. So I’ll have to find a way to entertain myself ‘til you come home” she added without thinking. It was then when she realized what she had just said and turned her head to look at him, flushed, “I mean, I… I’ll have to spend my days staring at the ceiling”.

“Yeah, I know what you meant” Daryl cleared his throat, “Doctor told you to rest and to not make great efforts. He said you should call him if your head or ribs start hurting or if you cough blood. Things like that” he shrugged.

“I think the latter is pretty obvious”.

“It depends on how often you do it” he replied, and she laughed, “How happened?”

“Didn’t Rosita tell you on the phone?” he shook his head, “I left a box in a shelf and it fell over me. The shelf, I mean”.

“I know”.

“I’m not scrawny”.

“I know” he repeated, grinning.

“Well, for when I reacted I was lying on the floor. But I was lucky” she added in a lighter tone.

“Lucky?” he said skeptically.

“Sure. It could’ve been a lot worse”.

“You’re fucked up” Daryl countered.

“Okay, a) thanks for the compliment”, Daryl blushed lightly, “and b) it _could’ve_ been much worse. I could’ve had to wear a collar, or my back could’ve ended up gravely damaged, or a rib could’ve pierce a lung… what do I have, a few bruises and a broken arm? Bones weld”.

“And a bump on your head” Daryl reminded her. Beth laughed softly.

“And a bump on my head” she agreed, smiling sweetly. He broke his gaze from the road to look at her for a second, “And thank you”.

“S’.”

“Don’t even think about saying s’ nothing, Daryl Dixon. I must be the most tiring girl in the world for you” she added casually, even though she was afraid that he really thought that of her. She felt him peeking her.

“You could’ve been worse” he answered after a while, but she recognized his playful tone. Beth smiled and poked him with her cast, “Careful with your arm”.

“Yes, Mr. Dixon” she grumbled, wriggling in her seat. Daryl stared at her with a half grin and Beth blushed deeply, “What? C’mon, eyes on the road or we’ll crash”.

“Yes, nurse” he muttered, turning his head again. Beth felt a fluttering in her stomach and she sighed, looking through the window while she fidgeted with her hands so he couldn’t see that they were trembling slightly.

* * *

 

The door was opened and Beth came in, smiling.

“I’m so happy to be finally at home again” she sighed, sitting melodramatically on the couch.

“You’ve just been out one night” Daryl answered as he closed the door, even though his expression was of amusement.

“A night can be really long” she said. She noticed how he stopped briefly before her words and her heart sped up. Why couldn’t she stop saying silliness?

“I gotta work, but you have my number. If you need something-“

“I’ll be okay” she assured him, “Go ahead, don’t worry ‘bout me”.

He nodded and she kept smiling until he got out again, and then, she dropped her head on the backrest of the couch and huffed.

“You’re such an idiot, Greene”.

* * *

 

The doorbell woke her up brusquely. She practically jumped, which provoked a deep pain to run through her, and while she got up with great effort, she couldn’t stop cursing whoever had decided to come suddenly.

“Alexis” surprise was evident in her tone, “what’re you doin’ here?”

“Hi” the girl seemed extremely shy suddenly, “I was gonna see how you were doin’”.

Beth blinked, confused.

“Well, I… thanks” she answered, “Come in”.

Alexis nodded and did so as Beth moved slowly until she could reach the couch again.

“Oh, please, sit down” she added when she realized her coworker was still standing up. She nodded and sat besides her, looking at her surroundings, “Well… do you wanna have something or-?”

“No, no, no” Alexis answered immediately, “Don’t bother”.

“Then, I’m listening” Beth encouraged her softly.

“I head what happened at the nursing home. It must be horrible”.

“It wasn’t so bad” Beth assured her. Alexis looked at her cast and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, “It could’ve been worse”.

“Yeah, it could’ve been” her coworker agreed, stretching lightly, “It could’ve happened to anyone in any moment”.

Beth frowned, confused.

“Yeah, I admit I had a bit of bad luck, but you know how old everything’s there…”

“You don’t have to give me explanations, we’ve all had our moments of clumsiness” Alexis smiled softly, dismissing her with a gesture.

“It wasn’t _clumsiness_. A whole shelf fell over me because it had been there before I was even born”.

Alexis leaned over her and patted her hand softly.

“We all know you’re going through a bad moment, Beth. No one is gonna judge you because you got a bit distracted, let alone after this” she continued, pointing at her body. Beth opened her mouth to answer, but she was too lost to do so. She licked her lips and looked at her.

“Alexis, I don’t follow you”.

She left any expression of affability and seriousness invaded her face.

“I know you’re not in your best moment right now, but we cannot afford having you causing trouble with this-“

“Causing trouble? What are you talking about?”

“Hey, I really don’t judge you” Alexis continued, “I’d try to get some kind of compensation from them if a huge piece of furniture fell over me at work, but we both know it was kinda your bad”.

Beth froze.

“I don’t want any compensation” she answered simply. Alexis smiled again.

“Of course you don’t. No one wants you to do so either”.

“Excuse me?”

“If you report this you’ll take us down. They’ll fire more people, they’re gonna reduce salaries, they’re fucking gonna kick us all… some of us have families”.

“I can assure you I have no intention to report nothing, Alexis” Beth said, gritting her teeth to contain the indignation she felt, “let alone prejudice you. You’re my partners”.

“But your wishes come before everyone else, don’t they? You know one of the reasons Joan left was because she was trying to keep Mrs. Dixon in Rosewood even though Dawn was just doing the best for everyone?”

Beth scooped back instinctively.

“She sent you” she understated, shaking her head. Alexis looked away and Beth grabbed her arm strongly, “What did she tell you? Alexis, she can’t fire you for no reason”.

Alexis moved away rudely.

“You just worry ‘bout yourself. You’re just head over wheels with Mrs. Dixon’s son and that’s why you didn’t want her being transferred to a better place. And now, this? Do you wanna ruin us?” she stood up and walked towards the door.

“Alexis” Beth stopped her, “I’m not gonna sue anyone. I hadn’t even thought about it”.

The girl turned lightly and looked at her incredulously.

“Do you promise me?” she asked, and Beth nodded, “If you’re lying to me-“

“I’m not the one lying right now” she interrupted her, “I know Dawn threatened you. I also know you wanna keep your job, but this is not the right way. She’s not gonna worry ‘bout you in the least and you know that. God, you were protesting as everyone just yesterday”.

Alexis kept her sight fixed in the door.

“We can’t win” said Alexis suddenly, “We can never win when it comes to these people. You should be smart and stop getting into trouble. Get better soon, okay?” and she got out. Beth went still a few moments, incapable of process what had just happened. Then, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the couch. Her heart was still pounding and she couldn’t just drop the subject. How could she, when Alexis had just turned from being her partner and someone in who she kind of trusted to a completely strange.

She started slipping slowly until her torso fell to her side, falling asleep while her mind kept racing.

* * *

 

She woke up again suddenly. She raised her head and found two hands in both of her shoulders putting her down again gently.

“’S just me” Daryl’s low, deep voice calmed her, and tension left her body all of a sudden. She swallowed, feeling her mouth dry, and lifted her eyes to look up at him. He was bending over the couch, watching her, “Doctor said I had to wake you up every three hours and ask you stuff”.

Beth nodded slowly as she rubbed her eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Beth Greene” she answered sleepily.

“You know what day of the week is?”

“Wednesday?”

“If you use that doubtful tone I’m gonna call the doctor” Daryl joked, and she smiled.

“What time is it?”

“It’s half past eight”.

“What?” Beth tried to get up, but Daryl kept her in place, “How could I sleep so many hours?”

Daryl shrugged.

“You needed it”.

“My god” Beth rested her head against her hand and sighed, “The worst thing is that I’m still tired”.

“If you wanna keep sleepin’-“

“No, no” she answered immediately, “I think I’ll take a shower”.

“Okay” Daryl nodded, standing up again, “You’re hungry?”

“A little bit” she replied, straighten up slowly just to realize that someone had scooped up her legs to the couch and had covered her with a jacket. A leather jacket. However, when she turned her head to look at Daryl, he was already in the kitchen, his back facing her, “I can do the cooking, if you want”.

“Nah, I can do it” Daryl didn’t spin around to talk to her, and Beth couldn’t help inhaling the scent of the jacket slightly. She put it on the arm of the couch and stood up. She felt a slight dizziness and had to stop to avoid falling again, and while she walked past Daryl to get to the bathroom, she squinted at him as much on the sly as possible.

Beth closed the bathroom’s door with her back while she used her good hand to undo her jeans. She was glad to find out that undressing was far easier than getting dressed with just one arm, but she had to manage quite difficulties to get rid of her tight jeans. She sat on the toilet and kicked them out, just to keep fighting to take off her t-shirt.

She was trying to unclasp her bra when someone knocked.

“Yes?” she shouted to be heard through the door.

“Don’t you need… something to cover the cast?” Daryl said. Beth blinked.

“I had completely forgotten” Beth admitted. There was a brief silence.

“I’ve got a plastic bag here”.

“Okay, hold on” Beth put herself behind the door and opened it slightly, just to let his arm pass. She realized that he was holding a towel too and blushed, “It seems like a sleep excess is also harmful” she laughed softly as she took both things, “Thank you so much”.

She closed the door again and covered her cast with the bag. She left the towel on the sink and opened the shower’s curtain. After a brief struggle, she could get rid of her annoying bra, and she lowered her underwear, letting both clothes in a discrete spot of the bathroom as she climbed on the shower.

She started singing softly as the water ran through the pipes and started pouring.

_I am giving up one of my dreams today_

_I found out I can’t always get my way_

_And sometimes a dream isn’t worth what you pay_

It was just when Beth raised her arm to grab the shampoo bottle that she felt a whiplash ran through her back from the base of her spine. She gasped as she leaned against the wall of the shower, gritting her teeth. She managed to turn off the tap as she contained tears of pain.

She got off the shower and put a towel on, still trembling from the wave of suffering that she had just felt.

“Fuck” she whispered, putting her good hand on the bag covering the cast. She felt as if she tried to move her back the most lightless she was going to screw it up, so she went really still, standing in the middle of the bathroom while she watched drops of water fall from her hair.

She hadn’t realized how much time she had been like that until Daryl knocked again.

“You can come in” she said, and heard how the door closed brusquely as soon as it was opened, “Daryl, I’m covered, you can come in”.

“What happened to you?” he asked her when he saw her pained expression, but not making an attempt to move closer to her. Beth couldn’t help but wonder if he always avoided half-naked women in general or just her in particular.

“I tried to raise my good arm and my back started hurting something terrible” she explained shortly, lifting her head to glaze at him.

“Do you want me to get a doctor?”

“No, no, he said it could happen. I’ll take an analgesic and it will be alright” she answered, “Besides, I’m already better”.

Daryl raised an eyebrow.

“You can raise your arm yet?”

“Well… no” she admitted, “but I’m sure in a while I will”.

A few silent seconds passed in which they looked at each other awkwardly, until she finally sighed.

“Fine, maybe I won’t” she added. She tried to think of a thousand different ways to ask him the next thing she was going to say, but she couldn’t find a less embarrassing option, so she didn’t beat around the bush, “Could you help me?”

Daryl paled, and then he blushed furiously.

“I didn’t mean helping me shower” she clarified quickly, “I just mean washing my hair”.

Another anguish and awkward moments went by as Beth felt her face turning as red as Daryl’s.

“Never mind” she finally said, “Sorry for asking you something like that”.

Daryl glazed at her for a second, and then he got out of the bathroom silently. Beth wondered if she had really fucked things up that time, but then he reappeared holding a chair and he put it next to the sink. Then, he made a gesture with his head to make her sit down. Beth nodded lightly and sat carefully. She threw her head back slowly so her hair would fall on the sink and she grabbed her towel tightly to avoid any embarrassing incidents.

Daryl started opening both taps until he found a good temperature. Beth couldn’t help but shutting her eyes and sighing when she felt his hands burying in her hair, and she contained a contentment sound that would turn the situation even weirder.

“Can you throw your head back a bit further?” he muttered, and she did so, letting water rinse the shampoo.

As minutes went by, she started forgetting why she had felt so uncomfortable, and the only thing she could think of was the pleasure of having someone (well, not someone, _Daryl Dixon_ ) washing her hair.

“I heard you singing ‘fore” he commented, and Beth’s eyes opened lightly, “What was it?”

“Oh” Beth muttered, “’S just a song I wrote a while ago”.

“Didn’t know you did that too”.

“I’ve sung since I learnt to talk. Maybe even before” she laughed, “Writing songs is my way to get some things outta my chest”.

“That one seemed…” Daryl didn’t finish his sentence.

“I know, sad” Beth nodded lightly, “I used to date a boy when I lived at the farm, Jimmy. We had been dating since we were sixteen, but while I had been at college we had distanced from each other. Then he found out I was gonna move to another town and happened what was meant to happen. I wasn’t exactly sad ‘cause we had broken. It was the feeling of a phase of my life ending so suddenly. Everyone thought we were gonna get married someday and then I didn’t know what to do with my life. Shortly after I arrived here” she smiled.

“You regret it?” his question surprised her, but she shook her head.

“I loved Jimmy, but I wasn’t in love with him. How could I fall in love with someone unable to stand that I do what I love?” she sighed, “I remember being afraid of my dad’s reaction. I wondered if he’d be disappointing because I was leaving the town and breaking up with who was supposed to be my future husband”.

“Was him?” Beth huffed.

“No. He told me: Bethy, you’re a girl who goes after her dreams, and that can be kinda intimidating for boys” she muttered. The water stopped running, and she felt a towel around her head.

“Done” he said. Beth stood up carefully, holding both towels, and watched him as he took the chair to bring it back to its place.

“Thank you so much, Daryl” she smiled sweetly, and he shrugged, looking away. When he turned, she took her underwear and bra (thanking that it was well-hidden from his sight) and got in her room to get dressed, hissing every time her back hurt.

When she got out again, Daryl was still in the kitchen, and she approached the table carefully, sitting down while he turned and put a mac n cheese in front of her. It made her mouth water, and she hurried to take the fork, but she stopped to wait for him.

“Enjoy” she said, and he nodded. They ate in silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Beth was thinking about many things at once: Alexis, Mrs. Dixon, her family… and suddenly, she found herself staring at Daryl. She looked away as soon as he raised his head, but she knew he had seen her, “It’s really good”.

He nodded again.

“A coworker came today” she said suddenly, and he glazed at her again. She didn’t know why those words had left her mouth, but she couldn’t stop them, “It seems like I got them in trouble”.

“You got ‘em in trouble ‘cause a shelf fell over you?” he asked, frowning.

“My boss’s afraid that I’ll sue them. I could cause lotta layoffs”, she explained. Daryl’s frown deepened.

“You should sue them”.

“What’re you saying?”

“She’s supposed to avoid things like that” he shrugged.

“Accidents happen”.

“Like with the boiler and the coffee machine?” Beth had no comeback, and he lowered his sight again to keep eating, “You can’t even sleep without medication, why do you have to cover her ass?”

“Because I don’t want money and I don’t wanna prejudice anyone” she countered, feeling a bit annoyed.

“So it’s better if you’re the one in the hospital?” he asked. Beth looked away and resumed her eating in silence. Suddenly, Beth didn’t feel like talking anymore. She finished her meal in a rush and took her plate and glass to the sink.

She soon felt Daryl behind her. When she turned, she saw him trying to get his plate under the spray of water.

“Here, I’ll do it” she said, “It’s the least I can do”.

“It’s alright” he answered, but Beth shook her head, taking his plate.

“I don’t mind” she muttered, turning again, but to her surprise, Daryl didn’t move. Instead, he stood up beside her, leaning against the counter while she washed the dishes in silence, “And… I guess you’re right”.

“Didn’t mean to upset you” he replied as he started helping her with her task.

“You were saying the truth though. It’s not about me. I mean, this time it was me, but it could happen to another partner” she continued, peeking at him, “They can’t always win”.

Beth left the dishes to dry out and turned to face him, smiling.

“And thanks”.

“I just washed a dish” he said. Beth shook her head and moved to place a kiss on his cheek.

“For everything” she added. She headed towards her room and closed her door as she tried to contain a giggle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, leave a comment telling me about it, and if you didn't, c'mon, tell me, don't be afraid! ^^


	11. Walk a tightrope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not been edited yet. Please ignore every possible mistake.  
> Enjoy!

Beth turned her head when she noticed Daryl beside the gurney, offering her a cup with coffee. She took it with a thankful smile.

“How is she?” he asked, not daring to move too closer. Beth shrugged.

“She’s pretty good. Doctors say her heart’s still weak. They say it’s probable it’ll never fully recover” she added quietly. She felt Daryl’s gaze fixed on her head, but she didn’t look up at him, “But I think that’s bullshit. She’s strong. She can make it through this” she affirmed, squeezing lightly the old woman’s hand between her own.

“She is” Daryl agreed a few seconds later. Beth raised her head, surprised, and he took a few steps until he was next to her, “Her children were Merle and I. She had to be pretty tough to deal with that”.

Beth laughed softly.

“Why is it so hard for me to believe that you were a difficult child?” Beth asked. Daryl shrugged.

“I did whatever my brother told me to, and my brother’s a dick” he snorted, “So was I”.

“No” Beth shook her head, “I don’t think so”.

He didn’t answer, instead piercing her with his eyes, and she turned again to focus on Mrs. Dixon. It seemed easier to be honest that way.

“How was she? I mean, when she was younger”.

“She was..” he cleared his throat, “she was intelligent. I don’t mean clever, I mean intelligent. I remember she could finish a whole book and read half of another in one afternoon”.

“Wow” she muttered, propping herself up on one elbow and resting her cheek against her fist.

“She wasn’t one to mess with” he continued, “One look and she had us both sitting in silence if we knew what was best” Daryl grinned, “She was rough”.

“She seems rough, yeah” Beth nodded softly, looking up at him again, “And she was so pretty”.

Daryl looked away from the spot in the wall where his eyes were fixed on to gaze at his mom and then at her before he nodded.

“She was” he muttered. Beth stood up carefully, not letting go Mrs. Dixon’s hand.

“She kinda reminds me of my mom” she said suddenly. Daryl exhaled deeply through his nostrils.

“Don’t think so”.

“I’m serious” she insisted, “my mom’s rough too. You’d think my dad has the strong character, ‘cause he’s strict, but she… God, she could even sit him down”.

Daryl huffed.

“And she always had to make sure we weren’t getting in trouble. My dad worked, so she was a housewife. I remember Shawn and Maggie used to play together and since I was the most little they didn’t want me to join them. One day, I wouldn’t just drop it and Shawn told me that if I wanted to play with them I’d have to ride Nelly the nervous first. She’s one of the most difficult to handle horses in our farm” she explained, and he nodded once, “And since I was a stubborn eight-year-old I decided to try. Shawn wasn’t serious when he dared me, he didn’t think I’d do such a stupid thing, but then, while they were playing, barn’s doors opened and I appeared screaming and trying to avoid that that mare would throw me to the floor. I couldn’t stop shouting and they were trying to calm down Nelly, but they couldn’t, and if it got too nervous she could send me to the ground and break my neck” Beth laughed humorlessly, “And then my mom appeared and said “what’s goin’ on?” and Shawn and Mags started yelling that I had took the mare without permission and then she approached her… a tiny, light woman approached a huge mare which was totally outta control and took her by her reins and pulled. She pulled so strongly that Nelly wriggled and turned to look at her, as if she couldn’t believe what my mom had done either. But she stopped. And then my mom took me and commanded Shawn to take Nelly to the barn again and he said nothing” Beth paused momentarily, recalling that day, “She didn’t talk to me while she cleaned up my face full of snots or while she prepared me a hot chocolate. And then she spun around, resting against the counter with a rag on her hands and told me calmly, “don’t _ever_ do anything like that again”. I swear I’ve never been more scared” Beth giggled, “It wasn’t like I was afraid she’d spank me or something… it was just… I don’t know, but I almost peed myself”.

Beth shut up, not stopping caressing the old woman’s hand with her thumb. She didn’t want to say that out loud, but she was about to cry. It was hard to admit how much she missed her mom sometimes. She wondered what her mom would do with people like Dawn.

“I wouldn’t mess with your mom” he commented, and Beth started laughing. She turned to look at him and shook her head.

“No, it wouldn’t be smart” she agreed, “I think we should go. You have to work, don’t you?”

“I don’t mind staying if you wanna stay” he answered.

“And making you get late to work? No, it’s not necessary. We can come back tomorrow” she assured him.

“Okay” he nodded, heading towards the door. Beth waited a little bit more and approached the old woman to kiss her on her forehead.

“You’re gonna recover, Katherine” she whispered, squeezing her hand one last time, “You’re strong”.

When she spun around, she found Daryl staring at her, and she just smiled.

“Let’s go”.

* * *

 

It was almost nine p.m Beth was talking on the phone with Shawn while she set the table.

“Yeah, everything’s alright. Rosita’s such a good roommate” she lied while she smoothed the tablecloth, “And money’s not a problem right now. Not that I can retire, but I got paid not long ago. I think I’ll have to sell the car though, I don’t want it to be taken because I can’t keep paying it”.

“If you need money I can lend you some, Bethy” Shawn assured her. Beth shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her.

“I don’t need money. I can always take the bus” she added, “Well, tell me, how are things going? You’re still dating Jenny?”

She heard him huff and she couldn’t avoid rolling her eyes.

“I’d prefer to cut my own leg before I get back with that lunatic”.

“Oh, I liked her” Beth said, sitting on the couch, “And there isn’t a new girl around?”

“I don’t get why y’all want me to get a girlfriend” he complained.

“All? Mom’s insisting too?”

“Mom and Maggie both. I swear I envy you, Bethy. You don’t have to come here so often and you can forget how suffocating they can be”.

“I think I wouldn’t ever forget that” Beth smiled, “What about dad? I can never speak with him”.

“Last time I went to the farm he was still working” Beth frowned, “But when he arrived he seemed fine”.

“He shouldn’t make so much efforts” she commented, almost to herself, “It’s not good for his health”.

“Well, considering he’s ignored everyone, maybe you should try. We all know you’re his favorite”.

“Oh, c’mon Shawn, get over your childhood trauma” she heard him laugh.

“Yeah, I know I’m mom’s favorite”.

“Sure”.

“Why not? She’s always boasting about her tall and strong son” Beth couldn’t avoid thinking he sounded like a child.

“She’s just trying to offer you to her friend’s daughters” Beth answered. Suddenly, she heard a key on the lock, “Hey, I gotta go. We’ll talk, okay?”

“’Kay, busy girl. Try to visit us some day, huh”.

“I’ll try. Love you. And try to talk some sense into dad when you go to the farm!” she added before she hung up. Door opened and Daryl appeared carrying two bags. Beth stood up and tried to help him, but he didn’t let her.

“You can’t bear weight” he reminded her, and she stepped back, pouting.

“You made the purchase?” Beth asked, puzzled. He left the bags in the kitchen’s table, where Beth had set everything to have dinner, and started taking out stuff. Beth hastened in reach him to save everything.

“What did you think I did to eat before?” Beth shrugged and he half grinned “Smells good”.

“It’s because I made dinner” she answered, smiling widely, “You like stew?”

“’M not picky” he answered, approaching the pot to smell more closely, “Smells real good”.

“Okay, if you try and not break any glass while you save the purchase, we’ll eat” she told him, and he blushed lightly, being more careful, “How was your day?”

Daryl shrugged.

“Normal one. Yours?”

“I’ve been doing the cleaning up (except in your room, of course) and then I’ve talked to my brother”.

“Shawn?” she nodded.

“He’s still worried since the night he was gonna pick me up from work…” she commented while she separated things which were destined to upper cabinets, “He wants to make sure everything’s alright and I’ve gotta a home”.

“Your family knows? That I’m your roommate” he added. Beth didn’t look at him.

“Not exactly”.

“What did you tell them?”

“That I’m living with Rosita” she admitted, turning to open one of the cabinets. She started putting some stuff and stood on her toes to reach one of the upper shelves. Suddenly, Daryl appeared beside her and put the pack of salt, “Thanks”.

“Don’t you think they’ll be surprised when they find out I’m not a Latin sassy girl?” he asked, and she couldn’t avoid laughing by that precise description of her friend.

“It’s not like they’re coming here or anything. I always go to see them”.

“They know about the accident?”

“Eh…”

“They don’t” he understated, turning to face one of the bags.

“It’s not that easy” she explained, even though she didn’t have to, “I don’t want them worrying about me. I’ve always been the protected one, you know? I’m the little sister and they’ve always thought of me as the most naïve. Besides, after…” she shut up immediately, cursing herself for not being able to bite her tongue, “after I lost my home, they’re really worried. It’s normal, right?”

Daryl glazed at her for a second, almost as if he knew exactly what was going on there, and then he nodded.

“They care” he commented, “That’s good”.

“Yes it is” she affirmed while she finished closing the fridge, “C’mon, I’m starving” she added, trying to switch the subject desperately.

 

One hour later, while they were both sitting on the couch, him watching TV as she read, phone rang. Daryl stretched his arm and picked it up, answering with mere grunts. Beth squinted at him, but she told herself that it wasn’t any of her business and focused on her book.

“She’s back to the nursing home” he said simply, and she stood up in a rush. He got up as well and grabbed her by her arm, “Careful there”.

“We have to see her” she answered, “Please”.

Daryl looked at her and sighed, nodding resignedly. She smiled and they both headed towards the pick-up truck.

 

When they arrived, they both walked directed room 412.

“Beth!” she head Tanya call her, “What’re you doin here?”

“I’m visiting a patient” she answering without stopping walking. When she reached the door though, she stopped and realized she had left Daryl behind. She waited for him there, feeling strangely nervous. When he reached her, she nodded, as if she was encouraging herself, and came in.

The old woman was lying on her bed, even though this time she was conscious, blinking and staring at the ceiling.

“Mrs. Dixon” she muttered, feeling a smile curving her lips. She approached her and brushed her hand. She pretended her stomach didn’t clench a little when the old woman broke the contact and kept smiling, “I’m so glad to see you here again”.

She turned around and realized Daryl hadn’t come in yet, and Tanya was beside him.

“How could they discharge her so soon?” Beth asked. Tanya opened her mouth to answer, but she closed it again, “I’ve been with her this morning and doctors said it wasn’t a good idea to transfer her here again”.

“Dawn wanted her here again so we could take care of her” Rosita appeared behind Tanya with files in her hand, “She was _worrying_ about her, of course. I’m happy to see you, bumbling”.

“Rosita” Beth approached her and both women hugged tightly.

“How are you, huh? Let me see ya, I couldn’t even visit you” she commented, making her turn around, “Tanya, I’m already here, don’t you have things to do?”

The girl seemed to hesitate before she left.

“Dawn wants a nurse in every room while someone’s visiting a patient” her friend informed her. She turned and looked at Daryl over her shoulder, “Ridiculous, right?”

“Why does Dawn want people watching? And Rosita, I gotta tell you something-“

“Daryl?”

Every pair of eyes focused on Mrs. Dixon, who was staring at her son. She stretched her arm and dropped her hand, looking for him.

“You’re mother’s calling you” Rosita told him, “C’mon, what are you waiting for? Beth and I have things to talk about, we’ll be right back”.

And she dragged her out of the room, leaving Daryl alone with his mother.

“God, things are getting crazy in here” she muttered hurriedly.

“I know. Alexis came to my house the other day”.

“Alexis? Wait, how did she know where you lived in? And… Alexis? I didn’t know you were so close”.

“We are not” Beth answered, “I had to change my data in my file, that’s how she knew”.

“But she _can’t_ revise your file for no reason” her friend countered.

“Dawn can”.

Rosita blinked a few times, confused.

“She arrived and she practically tried to force me to admit that the whole accident was my fault, and then she told me that if I reported it I would prejudice everyone. She made me promise her I wouldn’t report anything”.

Her friend’s jaw dropped.

“That bitch” Rosita whispered while her eyes widened, “I should’ve known, fucking traitor…”

“It doesn’t matter now” Beth retorted, “what matters is that Dawn’s controlling everyone. Joan told me I couldn’t trust anyone, and Dawn got her to quit, and now she sent a partner to my house to brain-wash me? That woman’s really crazy”.

“Shh” Rosita hushed her, moving her further from the hallway, “You should’ve seen what happened here. Not even patients buy her bullshit anymore. Mr. Calhoun? Her wife had a high blood sugar two days ago and she had to go to the hospital. Her husband spent ten minutes trying to convince someone to call an ambulance, but Dawn refused”.

“She refused?”

“Do you know how many suspects would attract if two patients were send to the hospital in a record time? And both were sent for pretty questionable reasons. Doctors said that it was because someone should’ve missed her daily insulin dose for a few days. Dawn says one of their daughters must bring her something sweet and that was what caused it”.

Beth turned around, as if someone would be overhearing them.

“What about Mrs. Dixon?”

“I can prove-“

“Beth?” both women turned suddenly when they heard Dawn’s voice, “I’m so happy to see you! What are you doing here?”

“She was saying hello” Rosita answered.

“Oh, and you didn’t come to see me?” she laughed softly, “Could you pass by my office? I’d like to talk with you so we can fill together some forms. Everything’s been a bit chaotic lately”.

“Sure” Beth nodded.

“Don’t leave without a hug, you silly” Rosita said suddenly, and hugger her tightly. She felt something brushing her jeans, and Rosita whispered, “Right pocket”.

Beth smiled, confused, and turned around to walk towards Dawn, who was still smiling warmly. The woman approached her and hugged her as well. Beth went still, trying to contain the rage inside her. She managed to keep smiling and pat her back softly with her cast.

 

They entered Dawn’s office and Beth noticed the huge mess in her desk. There were some gadgets around and Dawn seemed pretty unworried about the disaster.

“Excuse this disorder” she said, sitting in front of her, “Well, well, Greene, Beth. G, G… here you are” she took out her file and opened it as she took a pen and started writing quickly; “We have to deal with these annoying forms for the insurance”.

“I understand” she answered.

“Okay, so let’s start, May 20th, do you remember the time? How it happened? Don’t spare any detail, it’s important to be clear”.

“It was late afternoon. I was taking stock with Tanya-“

“Tanya Vance, you mean?”

“Yeah, I meant her. We were in the medicines’ room, taking stock, as I said, and we had to be moving boxes around” Dawn stared at her intently, nodding to every word she said, “Once we were finished, Tanya went to reception to deliver the paperwork to Joan so she could file it and I took one of the boxes to put it back in place. I left it in one of the shelves, and when I turned around; I heard a creak and the whole shelving fell over me”.

“I see” Dawn commented quietly, writing down a few things, “So you affirm it happened when you left the box”.

“Yes” Beth nodded, “the shelf must be loose and that’s why-“

“It’s curious, your partner had talked about that day too” she interrupted her as she opened a drawer to take out a sheet. She looked at it quickly, “According to her, you insisted in staying to order the boxes. Is that true?”

Beth frowned.

“I told her I didn’t mind doing it. As a favor” she added, and Dawn smiled.

“Of course, as a favor. And what did you do when the shelving fell over you?”

“I screamed” she shrugged, “I screamed in pain and to ask for help”.

“However, everyone affirms that they never heard a scream, it was the shelving which alarmed them”.

“That room’s pretty isolated. And I’d say I screamed pretty well considering how fast my partners appeared”.

“That’s another thing” Dawn raised her pen, “Lori Grimes, Mark Olsen and Rosita Espinosa were who helped you, right?”

“Quite so”.

“I’ve been informed that they wanted to take you to doctor Jensen and you refused”.

“I didn’t refuse” she clarified immediately, “It was Mark who-“

“And everyone who saw you right after the accident affirms that you could walk… how did they describe it?” she looked at the sheet, “With pretty ease to be a person who had just suffered the damages that appear in your hospital report”.

“Director” Beth snapped, “I know exactly what you’re trying”.

“What are you talking about?”

“Alexis visited me the other day. I know that you sent her”.

Beth saw how her jaw tensed.

“I had no idea”.

“And I wanted to tell you that I’ve changed my mind. I will denounce you for every bruise and every wound that shelving made. I have a lawyer and she’s told me that that’s your negligence, director, and that you’re in severe trouble”.

Dawn’s smile was so tight that Beth wondered if it was stitched to her face.

“Beth” she started calmly, leaning back against her chair while she took a few papers, “let’s start over, what do you think?”

She took the form she’d been filling and broke it in two in front of her before she threw it into the bin.

“Let’s be honest now. How long have you been consuming drugs?”

“What?” Beth couldn’t believe it.

“We’ve been missing medicines for weeks. You’ve been seen with Rosita and Joan in that room for a while for no reason, and I looked away cause I know you usually take unofficial breaks in your shifts to do God knows what, but I think that’s a lotta coincident now”.

“That’s not-“

“You lost your home recently, didn’t you?” Beth didn’t answer, “Didn’t you?”

“Yes” she whispered.

“It seems like your economical situation it’s not the best right now. Did you needed some escape, is that it? I have at least ten people willing to declare that your work had been being reckless lately, casually just when you lost your home”.

“I think it’s logical-“

“And I also know that you needed extra money now that your shifts are shorter. I know you’re living with Mrs. Dixon’s son, doing whatever you do with that man” Beth’s heart stopped, “and I also know you were really close to Joan and you don’t agree with my decisions”.

“What I think, director” Beth started, “is that you should say what you’re insinuating now”.

“I have proves that you’ve been stealing medicines to the nursing home, that you’re in a questionable relationship with Mr. Daryl Dixon and that you self-harmed yourself to get a compensation” she understated.

Beth was grabbing the chair so tightly her knuckles were completely white, but she ignored it.

“None of that is true” she managed to say.

“Do you have money to deal with such a long trial, Beth? ‘Cause I have witnesses, and proves, and my instincts are shouting at me to fire you for steal, labor negligence and fraud”.

“I already told you I would never do that” Beth repeated, “You can fire me if that makes you happy, but until you can prove I did any of those things you’ve been accusing me of you’re gonna have to pay me a compensation”.

“Maybe. But I have another option, I can fire nurse Espinosa” Dawn retorted.

“You can’t do that”.

“Can’t I? She’s unpunctual, and she has no respect for her bosses, she has several faults… and now, accomplice. I can accuse her of stealing with you and helping you in your fraud. It was her who took you to the hospital, right? How can we know she didn’t provoke you those damages? I just have to snap my fingers and you’ll both be kicked out. I’d have to pay you compensation, but that would be just until the trial and we both know you won’t win. I can prove every single thing. I can even sue Mr. Dixon for helping you in this charade of the accident”.

Beth felt air was too heavy to breath. She tried not to hyperventilate, but her heart was pounding merciless and she was about to tremble of pure rage.

“Or” she added, closing her file, “we forget about this whole thing and nothing happens. You come back to work on Monday and I never saw anything”.

“It’s not me who’s committing a crime, director”.

“You should check your stuff, Beth” Dawn said suddenly, “We could find lotta evidence in it”.

Beth’s eyes widened.

“You’re outta your mind”.

“I’m just trying to continue the Greater Good, nurse” she answered, “You can go now. Enjoy your days off”.

Beth stood up suddenly, breathing agitatedly. She was about to open the door when Dawn called her again.

“You should get away from guys like Daryl Dixon. That kind of people is not good to help you recover from your addiction. I’m sure Doctor Jensen could give you some advice”.

 

Beth slammed the door.

“Beth! Beth!” she heard Lori calling her out, but she didn’t stop, instead running towards the parking lot. When she reached Daryl’s truck, she bent over herself, trying to suffocate the sobs.

She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to cry over Dawn. Never.

 

She managed to straight up and calm her breathing and beating slowly. She had to be smart. She couldn’t let them win.

“You okay?” Daryl had just appeared beside him and she hadn’t even heard him. She wondered if she would ever get used to that way of his to walk so silently.

“Yeah, I just felt a bit sick” she answered, “Sorry for leaving you there, I needed to breathe. How is she? Did you talk?”

Daryl nodded.

“For a while” Beth’s smile turned a bit truer.

“I’m really happy to hear that” she said honestly, “Let’s go home, okay?”

They both got in the truck while her mind kept racing.

“We remembered old times” he said suddenly, and she turned her head to look at him, surprised that he had started the conversation for once, “It was okay”.

“What did you recall?” she asked.

“Well” he said, “she started talking about my first preschool day. What I was wearing, that I wouldn’t let her touch my hair, that she made me lunch and she took me there. Merle went with the rest of older children to primary school while I stayed there”.

“And then?”

“She bent over me and said: ‘listen really carefully Daryl, if some of these kids bother you, tell me and I’ll kick their parents’ asses myself”.

“Wow” she answered, feeling laughter growing in her chest, “She really was a strong woman”.

“Yeah” he affirmed, grinning, “But… that wasn’t my first day of preschool”.

Beth frowned.

“I’ve already started it three months ago. Merle used to take me every day”.

“Then…?”

“She used to be lit half of the time. She probably spent my first day sleeping” he said as if nothing, and Beth went still. She tried to think of something to tell him, but everything seemed superficial and stupid in her mind. She looked at him, but his gaze was fixed on the road, “But I didn’t tell her. Doesn’t matter anymore anyway”.

Beth blinked a couple times and clasped her hand with his.

“You’re a good son” she told him.

“’M nothin’” he answered, not looking at her yet.

“You’re the _best_ son” she repeated, squeezing tightly his hand.

Daryl finally turned his head to look at her, and she smiled.

“And she knows that”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	12. Negligence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and Dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there isn't a lot of Beth-Daryl moments, but I swear this chapter was absolutely necessary. Besides, things are getting way madder than now.  
> Enjoy!

That Monday Beth got ready for work really slowly. She was trying to be as silent as possible. She knew Daryl wouldn’t have to work in a few hours and she didn’t want to wake him. Besides, she hadn’t told him she was going to come back to work. That would mean telling him what had happened, and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell him that she was being threatened by Dawn, that because of her he could lose everything and so could Rosita.

 

She was putting on some clean jeans when she felt something on her right pocket. She frowned, confused, and took it out to see what it was. A wrinkled little paper with something scribbled in it, its ink blurred from the washing machine.

Beth folded the paper again and blinked. Why had Rosita written that? That name was incredibly familiar for her, but she couldn’t remember where she had heard it. She closed her eyes, trying to think, but nothing came to her mind. She huffed; feeling frustrated, and put that little paper on her pocket again. She could do more research later.

She opened her room’s door and she was just about to collide against Daryl, who seemed as surprised as her.

“What’re you doin’?” Beth asked him automatically.

“I could ask the same thing” he countered, and she shrugged.

“I’m gonna take a walk”.

“To the nursing home?” Daryl asked, and Beth’s eyes widened. Daryl pointed something behind her and when she turned, she found her ironed uniform and laying on her bed, “I thought you were on your sick leave”.

“I _was_ ” Beth nodded, looking everywhere except for him, “I have… we need help to keep that place running. I have to do it for the elderly”.

“You’re not big help with a broken arm” Daryl pointed out, and Beth threw him a poisonous look.

“’M already a lot better. Besides, it’s gonna be a short shift. Don’t worry ‘bout me” she added, walking past him to go to the kitchen, “Do you want some coffee?”

Daryl grunted an answer and Beth started preparing it. It was easier if she just focused on that simple task than if she started imagining what would happen that day. Her heart sped up just from the thought alone of crossing paths with Dawn again. Was she going to keep her word? Beth couldn’t know: if she reported her, Dawn would report her back and she would end up being fired. If she didn’t report her, Dawn could fire her nevertheless and also report her for false stuff. She had found boxes of medicines on her locker. She was convinced that Dawn had people on her side. The fact that she could trust no one gave her creeps.

“You want a lift?” Daryl asked her. Beth turned around, surprised to find him there.

“No, you only have one day to sleep late…” she started, but he shook his head.

“I told ya I didn’t sleep too many hours in a row” he answered, and Beth bit her lip, thinking about his offer just for an instant before she nodded.

“Thanks, that’s nice from you” she told him smiling, and he just shrugged. Beth felt him peeking her while he headed to his room and she shivered lightly while she sipped her cup of coffee.

She could be a grown woman, but if she felt one more look like that, Beth’s legs were going to become jelly.

* * *

 

Beth was doing a patrol through the rooms, checking everything was good and talking with the elderly on the way. Dealing with patients was one of the reasons why Beth loved that job. She thought it was unbelievable that some people would prefer spend their life locked in a cubicle without talking with anyone on their working hours. It had its bad part, of course, but the feeling of satisfaction that ran through Beth compensated everything else.

In that moment she couldn’t find any good feelings though.

“Lori” Beth said when she found her in one of the rooms. Her friend was there, changing an old man’s bandages.

“Beth? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at home!” the woman threw a gauze into the bin and helped the man lay down again, and as soon as she did so, she hastened to approach Beth and hug her tightly, stroking her hair as if she was her mom, “How are you?”

“I’m fine, I really am” Beth smiled, “I’m so happy to be here”.

Lori frowned.

“But you still have a cast, how did they let you come back to work?”

Beth shrugged, and the wrinkle in Lori’s forehead increased.

“How’s the baby?” Beth asked suddenly, trying to change the subject. Lori put a hand over her belly instinctively and her expression softened.

“He… or she… is really okay. I don’t have any morning sickness, which is a relief. I remember being throwing up the whole day when I was pregnant with Carl” she laughed softly, “It wouldn’t be really good to be puking in here, right?”

“They don’t know it yet, right?” Lori shook her head, “You should tell ‘em”.

“I will” she agreed, “But not now. Things are getting out of hand right now, and the last thing w all need is for me to add this to the list. I’m fine. I don’t need to leave yet, let alone give Dawn a reason to put me in the “dispensable” ones”.

Beth rested her hand over Lori’s, and she felt one of her friend’s fingers raising her chin so she would look at her in the eyes.

“What about you? Everything okay?” she asked her, and Beth nodded, “How are things going with Mr. Dixon?”

“It sounds like he’s one of the elderly when you call him that” Beth snorted.

“You used to call him that” Lori winked at her, “Listen, Beth… Shane told me some stuff about Daryl and his brother”.

Beth frowned.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Apparently his brother has had some big trouble for dealing drugs and some violent offenses. Daryl has had his part too. Listen, I’m conscious he must have a difficult life, and I know he’s a good man. What he does proves it” she squeezed Beth’s hand softly, “But you gotta be careful, okay? I’m always telling you to not trust everyone so easily”.

“Now you sound like my mom” she smiled. Lori pinched her cheek fondly, “And now you’re my grandma”.

“Oh, shut up” Lori laughed, “I ought to keep working or I won’t finish for today”.

“Yeah, I should do the same thing” Beth agreed, moving away from her friend. She was about to get out of the room when she thought of something, “By the way, have you seen Rosita?”

“Yeah, she wasn’t feeling well and she went home” Lori answered, “It must be a summer cold, I guess”.

Beth nodded.

“A summer cold” she muttered for herself before she kept with her patrol with the little paper tightly squeezed inside her fist.

* * *

 

It was late, but Beth was still working. She was physically exhausted: she had been going from one place to another the whole day, dealing with every single instruction without a break. She sighed and stretched her neck carefully before she kept walking through the dining room. It was a calm evening. The elderly were having dinner without much problem, and except for the soft murmur of their conversations, Beth could only hear her own breathes as she inhaled and exhaled deeply.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she needed a few seconds to realize Tanya and Mark chatting next to her.

“… it seems like that poor woman’s not gonna make it” Tanya muttered. Something inside Beth’s mind clicked and she sharpened her ear. She knew it wasn’t right, and she had been taught that overhearing private conversations was impolite, but she couldn’t help it.

“Yeah, but there’s nothing we can do ‘bout it. Sometimes not even doctors can do anything. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go” her partner answered. Tanya sighed.

“I’m so sorry for her sons and her grandchildren. They always visited here. Did you see the little one? He’s just five. I can’t imagine how hard is gonna be for him to lose someone bein’ so young”.

“He won’t ever understand what happened”.

“I know, but-“

“Nurse!” a man started screaming, waving his spoon and startling everyone, including Beth, who was practically leaning over her partners to listen better. They both turned towards her, and she dissimulated quickly, “My soup’s poisoned!”

“Not again, Lord” Tanya hissed, “Albert, I assure you the food is perfectly fine”.

“You’re tryna kill me!” the man kept shouting, “That’s not happenin’, you hear! Those fucking Vietnamese didn’t, and you’re not gonna kill ol’ Al with a shitty, disgusting soup that-!”

“Watch your mouth, sir, or I’m afraid you’ll have to start having meals on your own” Dawn appeared suddenly, and the old man seemed confused by her warning, his wrinkled face still red from rage.

Dawn approached her, and Beth could feel how every eye was on her as her heart started pounding. The woman walked until she was right in front of her, and then she smiled softly.

“I’m glad to see you here again. It’s really praiseworthy that you’ve insisted so much in coming back so soon” Dawn told her. Beth tried to dissimulate her confusion. She just nodded, and then the director lifted her arm and squeezed her good shoulder lightly before she kept walking and gesturing Mark without looking at him, but he followed her nevertheless.

The dining room fell silent all of a sudden. Beth felt Tanya’s eyes on her, and she wondered to what extent Dawn’s accusations had been public knowledge, or if she had just managed to bury everything as easily as she had made it up.

“This soup’s shitty” the old man grunted, breaking the atmosphere. Tanya huffed and walked towards him to take his soup away brusquely.

* * *

 

_Of all the money that e’er I had_

_I spent it in good company_

_And all the harm that e’er I’ve ever done_

_Alas it was to none but me_

_And all I’ve done for want of wit_

_To memory now I can’t recall_

_So fill to me the parting glass_

_Good night and joy be with you all_

Beth stopped singing as she finished folding a blanket. The old woman had her eyes closed and she was still humming the song.

“My mother used to sing it all the time” Beth told her, “When I was a child, she would sing it for me so I could sleep. My father was so sick of it” she laughed.

Mrs. Dixon opened her eyes slightly.

“I like yer voice”, she said quietly, “’S so pretty”.

“Thank you very much” Beth answered her with a sweet smile.

“I used to sing too, but my voice wasn’t like yours” she continued, “No, my husband always told me: “Kate, you sound like a cat’s dying on your throat””.

“I’m sure you weren’t so bad” she assured her. The old woman shook her head.

“I used to sing quietly so he wouldn’t hear me. I used to sing to my children. I liked that woman who sang jazz… Ella Fitzgerald” she remembered, “Merle liked other stuff, but Daryl… oh, my little boy was somethin’ else”.

Beth left the blanket and approached her.

“Really?” she encouraged her to keep talking.

“Mm-hm. He would get into bed with his brother and wait for me to sing. They were the only ones who made me feel special, my two lil’ treasures. Merle was a hurricane. I always thought he’d be an actor. He was as handsome as his dad when he was young. And Daryl… Daryl was just like me. Quiet and sweet. A really good boy”.

“Sounds like him” Beth smiled lightly. The old woman turned her head to look at her.

“His blood boiled fast, that is. Blood’s thicker than water, and he’s a Dixon after all” she added in a bitter tone, “It’s good he has you”.

Beth blushed.

“It’s not what you think” Beth answered, “Besides, Daryl has done a lot more for me. You’ve raised a good man”.

But she shook her head again.

“You” she lifted her trembling finger to point at Beth, “are just what he needs. God knows my poor child hasn’t known much kindness”.

Beth felt a pang of pain on her chest when she thought about that dark-haired little boy with his fist on his mouth leaning over his mom. An alcoholic mom who surely spent her life drunk while he had to be on his own or following a problematic brother. Beth couldn’t imagine such a horrible childhood.

“Kindness is all he deserves” Beth assured her after a while, taking her head carefully. To her surprise, the old woman didn’t break the contact. She looked at her for a second, in that way that reminded her of Daryl so much, and then she nodded.

* * *

 

Beth was on reception, writing down the doctor’s instructions for the different patients.

“I’ll need a urine sample from the patient of room 163”.

“Something worrying?” Beth asked as she wrote. The man didn’t answer her. He never did. Actually, Beth would be more surprised if he did someday. For him, patients weren’t more than their room’s number. He barely knew their names or lives, and nurses dealt with most of the “dirty work” so he worked pretty comfortably just having to give instructions.

“That’s all” he said, and he was already spinning around when Beth stopped him.

“Doctor Jensen” he stopped a moment and looked at her over his shoulder with a frown.

“I have things to do, nurse” that was another thing. Beth doubted he even knew her name.

“It’s just one of the patient’s file…” Beth started, not knowing exactly what she was going to tell him, “I saw something unusual a few weeks ago. Somethin’ that shouldn’t be there, I think”.

“And what’s that unusual thing?”

“It was indicated to administrate a dose of something called…” Beth made a pause to pretend she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it, “digoxin, I think”.

“For which patient was that indication addressed to?” the doctor asked with genuine curiosity. Beth felt lightly proud of being the first person able to catch his attention.

“The patient from room 412” she answered, watching his reaction, but his face kept blank, “I couldn’t help but wonder what it was, since we’ve never given it to her or to another patient”.

Doctor kept silent a few seconds.

“Maybe you read it wrong”.

“I’m positive I read it right” she insisted softly. The man was watching her so intently that Beth swallowed hard, intimidated.

“Digoxin inhibits some heart pumps to reduce its frequency”.

“It’s an anti arrhythmic” Beth deducted.

“You did your homework then, nurse” he answered ironically.

“Does it mean that this patient had an arrhythmia?”

“You’re really perspicacious”.

“Doctor” Beth was starting to lose her patience, “what if someone without an arrhythmia took that medication? What would happen?”

Doctor seemed to reflect on that question.

“In short term… it could cause nausea, vomits, diarrhea… the organism would show that it doesn’t need the medication”.

“And what would happen in long term?” Doctor frowned, “I mean… could it cause… heart diseases?”

“Any overdose of any medication could cause damages, nurse”.

“Yeah, but, what kind of damages would digoxin cause specifically?”

Doctor huffed.

“It could cause heart failure, or asystole, which is the opposite…” he raised an eyebrow, “It could be extremely fatal for heart’s function”.

“You mean it could plug it” Beth suggested. Doctor nodded.

“It’s a possibility”.

“Then should we keep administrating her digoxin, doctor?” He shook his head.

“I don’t know how that indication ended up in her file, but I’m sure I didn’t write it. Someone must write down my instructions incorrectly. I’m against the use of that medicament. It’s one of the drugs that cause 90% deaths from side effects”.

Beth felt breathless all of a sudden.

“I’ve satisfied your curiosity yet, nurse?”

Beth nodded jerkily.

“Thank you so much, doctor”.

She started walking at full speed towards room 412. She had to search everywhere. If no one had cleaned that room entirely, there must be something there. An empty box, a prescription, anything.

However, she hadn’t reached her destination yet when she saw Beth walking from the other side of the hallway. Beth slowed down the pace suddenly, walking as calmly as possible as they walked past each other.

“Beth” she called her suddenly. Beth inhaled deeply and turned around, “Everything okay?”

Her mouth wanted to open and start calling her things that would make a sailor blush, but she contained herself and listened to the voice of reason.

“Oh, Doctor Jensen was lookin’ for you. He said somethin’ about Mrs. Calhoun and he wanted to talk to you” she said. She blinked a few times, as if she had nothing to do with anything, and Dawn nodded after a few seconds of exhausting analysis.

“Thank you, Beth”.

She managed to smile lightly and to make her legs walk again. If someone had been watching her, they would’ve seen her walking with total serenity towards room 412 and close the door after her, with a blank expression. However, if they had looked more closely, they would’ve noticed how her hands were clenched in trembling fists so tightly that her knuckles were completely white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment telling me what did you think of this chapter!


	13. Discretion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, ignore every possible mistakes!   
> Enjoy!

That morning Beth was feeling especially moody. She had woken up with a headache and she just wanted to lie down and sleep, but she couldn’t do that. She got up as reluctantly as she got ready for work.

She thought she was dissimulating her bad mood pretty well, but then she felt Daryl’s hand on her shoulder.

“What?” she asked brusquely. She swallowed, “What?” she repeated in a softer tone.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, why?” Daryl gestured at the kitchen counter, and when Beth looked down at it, she realized that she had been stirring up her cup of coffee so energetically that she had spilled it everywhere. Beth muttered “shit” and took a damp rag to clean that mess up.

“There, lemme help you” he lifted his arm, but she moved away rudely.

“No, leave it, I can do it” she shook her head, not even looking at him as she kept cleaning.

“Kay” he answered. Beth’s gaze was fixed on the counter, but then she heard him sit down on the couch. She sighed, feeling shitty for being so damn rude.

“I’m sorry” she apologized, turning to gaze at him. He nodded.

“You don’t have to” he answered, but she knew that wasn’t true. She dropped the rag and sat down beside him with a thud.

“I’ve got out of bed on the wrong side and I’m an idiot with you and it’s not fair. Sorry, okay?”

“You mean you live on the wrong side of the bed” he countered, but Beth noticed the teasing tone, and she poked him lightly.

“You’re charming”.

“I do my best” Daryl half grinned and Beth found herself smiling so widely her cheeks hurt.

“Do you know they could remove my cast next week? I’d only have to wear a sling and I’d start the rehabilitation”.

“Already?” he asked, frowning.

“I’ve been wearing this cast for almost a month. I need to have a free arm” she sighed, not breaking eye contact. Daryl snorted.

“You do the same stuff with cast or without it”.

“I challenge you to get dressed and undressed with a useless arm every day” she told him jokingly. Suddenly, she realized her face was dangerously close to Daryl’s. Judging by how he tensed, Beth knew he had noticed it too. Beth swallowed.

“It must be difficult” he muttered, in a forced tone that tried to be casual. Beth nodded slightly.

“A lot” she whispered, trying to ignore the fact that her heart was going to explode if he kept looking at her mouth.

Beth couldn’t stop wondering if her muscles would start listening to her and move, or if her brain would have the gentleness to _shut up_ , or if her thoughts would start being coherent.

Suddenly, Daryl moved his hand really lightly, almost accidently, and his knuckles brushed hers.

“I gotta work” she said suddenly, getting up in a hop. Daryl stared at the spot of the couch in where she had been sitting a moment ago, and then he lifted his head and looked at her, nodding, “See you later”.

She got out so quickly that she almost crashed against a wall when she tried to get to the stairs.

“My god, what are you thinking?” she muttered angrily while she stepped out to the street and the first lights of the day blinded her.

* * *

 

Beth spent the rest of her day waiting for the clockwise to move a little bit faster, for her shift to finish soon. On one hand, there was nothing she wished more than to run into Dawn, and on the other hand, that was exactly what she wanted to avoid.

 

So that she kept herself busy, trusting in her analgesics to numb the pain so she wouldn’t have to spend another sleepless night because her muscles and bones were aching from the work. In any other moment, she would have gone to the rest room and had a coffee with her partners while they talked about anything, but suddenly, the nursing home looked like a battlefield for her. Beth felt every pair of eyes setting on her as she walked past every room, and she knew she couldn’t trust anyone except for Rosita or Lori. Two people who, by the way, she couldn’t ever see there.

“Rosita” she called her out once, but suddenly Alexis appeared and required her to do something. Her friend shrugged and looked at her apologetically before she left.

A few hours later, she saw Lori in the rest room, but she couldn’t even open her mouth, for the doctor Jensen wanted her to put an intravenous to a patient.

 

The day was dragging out so much that Beth wondered for the first time since she had started working there if she would be able to keep smiling. The ambient was so tense that Beth was really afraid that something would happen and everything would explode for the stupidest thing.

 

It was almost the end of her shift when the disaster occurred. Beth was with the doctor, nodding to every word he was saying to her as she changed the bandages to an old man.

“Wound’s healing pretty fast, so we won’t have to change the bandages so often in the following days” he said, and Beth managed to smile at the old man.

“Did you hear that? You’ll be healthy as a horse in the blink of an eye” she encouraged him, and she felt a little bit relieved when he returned her the smile.

She helped the old man to lie down again carefully and when she spun around, she found the doctor staring at her.

“By the way, regarding your question of the other day…” he started, and Beth held the little scissors a little too tightly.

“Yes?”

“Did you find the person who wrote that instruction in her file?”

Beth hesitated a few seconds before she shook her head.

“No, doctor”.

“I recommend you to find them, nurse”.

“But Doctor Jensen” she started, “I thought you reckoned it was an accident”.

“And I do” he nodded, “but I want to find the responsible of that blunder and make sure they don’t work in any health institution ever again”.

Beth frowned, surprised by the harshness of his words.

“And nurse…” he continued, “Find it out it discretely, would you?”

She nodded. The doctor closed the patient’s file, gave it to Beth, and proceeded to get out of the room when Beth stopped him:

“How do I know you’re not playing with me, doctor?”

The man didn’t even turn around.

“Why would I play with you, nurse?”

“Because that’s what you do here” Beth approached him suddenly, almost threateningly, “You don’t care about the elderly. You play and manipulate people just to get what you want. And you, especially you, have never felt any affection for your patients or your coworkers. Why would I trust you?”

Doctor turned around to face her, the frown never leaving his face.

“There’s a big difference between indifference and want to harm someone, nurse” he answered, ignoring her previous question with contempt, “It’d be important for you to keep that in mind”.

“So you know everything”.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about”.

“I never talked about wanting to harm anyone, doctor. I thought we were talking about _accidents_ ”.

“And I thought you were smart enough to think a little bit further of the trifles you learn in college”.

And he exited the room, leaving Beth completely annoyed.

* * *

 

Beth was about to leave. She had changed her clothes in the locker room and she was fidgeting inside her purse as she walked down the aisle towards the entry. However, she thought that Mrs. Dixon’s room was just a few steps away, and it didn’t really matter if she stayed a little bit longer if she wasn’t working. So she walked to the room 412, feeling happier just thinking about being a while with the old woman.

 

But when she got there, she found the door closed. Beth knew something was off. They never really closed the doors unless they had to help them cleaning themselves or the doctor was checking them. Truth is, it could have been one of those options, but her gut was telling her otherwise. Instinct, sixth sense or whatever, but Beth knew there was something wrong.

So she opened the door and found Alexis next to her bed. The girl lifted her head suddenly and stared at Beth incredulously.

“What are you doing here?” Alexis asked brusquely.

“None of your damn business” she barked. She would never talk like that to someone, let alone to a partner, but the memory of her visit was still fresh in her mind, “What’re you doin?”

“We’re having a tea party, what do you think I’m doing?”

Beth noticed a syringe in Alexis’s hand as she tried to find Mrs. Dixon’s vein.

“Doctor said we couldn’t give her anything except for serum and painkillers” Beth reminded her, stepping forward almost instinctively. Alexis frowned.

“Well, in her file there’s a note which says I have to give her this” she countered, shaking the syringe lightly and raising a little box.

Beth got to read its name, and a second later, she threw herself against Alexis.

“What’re you doin’? Get off me!” Alexis shouted when Beth grabbed her arm strongly.

“Don’t even think about inject her that!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the girl exclaimed, struggling as much as possible while she tried to get rid of Beth and held the syringe, all at the same time, “Stop!”

“You’re gonna kill her!” Beth managed to scream, shaking her brusquely to make her drop the syringe. Alexis looked at her, horrified.

“You’re crazy” she understated, pushing her away so harshly that she almost sent her to the floor, “You’re crazy and you’re trying to drive us all crazy”.

“Alexis, don’t inject Mrs. Dixon that” Beth repeated in a calmer way. Suddenly, Alexis half smirked and snorted.

“Or what? You’re gonna threw a shelving over me, you fucking junkie?” Beth stepped back, “I don’t care about your stuff, but don’t fuck us all”.

“Listen very carefully, I don’t give a crap about what you think of me, but I want you to drop that syringe or I’ll make you drop it” she told her slowly. Alexis’s expression turned from mocking to annoy.

“Don’t even think about threatening me, Beth. You’re unstable. You’ve spent too much time with this woman and now you’re just like her”.

“Dawn’s so much worse than she appears to be, Alexis. I swear to God, I swear, that woman’s the really crazy one. I need you to drop that syringe right now”.

Her expression softened slowly, and then she shook her head.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that shit, Beth” she told her before she took Mrs. Dixon’s arm and dug the syringe in her forearm carefully.

It was then when Beth lost all of her patience and reasoning. She moved towards Alexis and pushed her so hardly that Beth could hear how her head smashed against the wall. The girl screamed in pain and shock, but at the same time dropped the syringe before she could inject the old woman anything, to Beth’s relief.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?” she yelped, hysterical. Beth raised both hands.

“Listen, Alexis, I-“

She didn’t get to finish the sentence. Alexis slapped her strongly. Beth stepped back, more surprised than pained from the hit. She opened her eyes and stared at her, stunned, but she only had a second before Alexis started hitting her right and left.

Beth moved her away, trying to not hit her but without being careful anymore, and at some point she managed to kick her and make her back up. She pushed her again and that was all it took to make her fall.

 

It was right then when the door opened and the first exclamations started. Beth was too confused, nervous and angry to understand what they were saying, but suddenly she felt two strong arms moving her out of the room and she could barely hear Alexis’s screams.

For when she reacted, she realized it was Tony who was holding her. Beth tried to remove from his grip, but he thought she was trying to come back to the room and his grip tightened.

“Beth, c’mon, be fucking still” he grunted, trying to be careful. Beth stopped struggling and looked at him, “What the hell happened in there?”

“She was…” Beth started, looking around her, “Where’s Rosita? And I need to speak to the doctor, Tony”.

He glazed at her like she was crazy.

“Please, it’s important. I have to talk to Doctor Jensen, please” she begged. Her partner looked at her before he sighed.

“I don’t know where he is, Beth” he said, but she shook her head.

“Then help me find him. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important”.

“Beth, you just beat the shit outta a coworker!” he suddenly exclaimed, exasperated, “Why on Earth you wanna speak to that man?”

“Because Alexis was gonna kill a patient without knowing it!” she answered in the same tone, moving completely away from Tony.

“Nurse Greene” they both froze when they heard Dawn’s voice.

“Great” Tony sighed, desperate.

“Office. Immediately”.

Beth didn’t hesitate to turn around and walk towards her firmly before she got into her office.

* * *

 

“… I didn’t even know what was happening. I was trying to talk to her and she wouldn’t stop screaming that I was gonna kill Mrs. Dixon, that I was gonna kill her” Alexis narrated in between sobs. Dawn offered her a tissues pack and she took one, sniffling loudly, “I told her it was my obligation to inject Mrs. Dixon her meds, but when I was about to do so she attacked me. Everything was so confusing… I couldn’t… Beth’s my partner”.

“I know, darling, I know” Dawn patted her back gently.

“I didn’t wanna hurt her”.

“I understand” Dawn nodded, “I’d like to talk privately with Nurse Greene. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go home and rest, it’ll be good for you”.

Alexis nodded and got up, exiting the office while she kept crying.

As soon as the door closed, Dawn’s expression changed.

“We had a deal” she gritted her teeth.

“No, director, we have no deal” Beth countered firmly, “I’ve done the right thing and I don’t regret it”.

“Do you know what I could do right now?” Dawn’s tone was almost hysterical, rage bubbling inside her, “I could initiate proceedings for violent behavior. I could fire you. I could denounce you for aggression!”

“Do it” she said simply. Beth felt strangely calm. Her heart was still pounding, but at least her voice was clear and sure.

“I should call the police”.

“Call them” Beth encouraged her. When Dawn just stared at her incredulously, Beth moved the phone towards her, “C’mon, call them. I’ll be glad to tell them what’s been going on here”.

“I thought we were done with this subject, Beth” Dawn tapped her desk nervously.

“What subject?”

“Stop playing dumb with me. I helped you”.

“I didn’t ask for your help”.

“But you needed it”.

“You caused the problem” Beth countered, “You accused me falsely and blackmailed everyone somehow. I’ve been dealing with that because I really thought a broken arm wasn’t so grave. But now, this… I can’t allow this, Dawn”.

“Allow what?”

Beth leaned lightly to be closer to the woman.

“I know Mrs. Dixon’s heart attack is on you. I know she didn’t have any heart disease. And I know you’re who planned everything”.

Dawn raised her eyebrows.

“Where do those accusations come from?”

“Digoxin” Dawn paled, “It sounds familiar to you, right? I have boxes and boxes hid in a safe place. You made someone write fake instructions in her file so we could inject her that regularly, didn’t you? You tried to poison her to death”.

“You’re making a really grave accusation”.

“Like you accused me of stealing, fraud and drug addiction?”

A few silent seconds passed.

“You don’t have any proves. Even though you had boxes, what would that mean? You could’ve bought them yourself”.

“Well, there are registers of medicines” Beth answered, “We could check them out. And even if you managed to destroy them, the pharmaceutics keep their own registers”.

“No one’s gonna believe you” Dawn was shaking her head, enraged.

“Everyone’s gonna learn what kind of person you are, Dawn” Beth continued.

“You’re lying”.

“You’ve been poisoning people”.

“That’s not-“

“You’ve been playing with human lives… for what? The greater good? I’d say for your own benefit. Or most likely, for nothing”.

“Careful with what you say”.

“It’s not me who was to be careful right now. You’ve manipulated, you’ve harmed everyone… for nothing. No one’s gonna reward you, Dawn! People are gonna die, and that’s on you, and it’s gonna be _for nothing_!”

Dawn stood up suddenly, shaking with rage.

“You’re suspended of work and salary until further notice, I’m gonna initiate proceedings for this, and I’m gonna talk to Alexis to make her denounce you”.

“Okay” she accepted, nodding.

“Get outta my office”.

“With pleasure” Beth got up and stared at her before she turned around and left. She was about to close the door when she said one last thing, “People like you… people like you can’t win”.

* * *

 

The door opened brusquely. Daryl turned his head and stood up suddenly when he saw her. Her eyes were gleaming with tears and her limbs were shaking.

“What happened?” he asked, but Beth just shook her head, unable to say anything. Daryl made her sit down and looked at her, “Beth, what happened?”

But Beth couldn’t speak. She kept shaking her head, and without warning, threw herself against Daryl’s chest and started sobbing. She felt him stiffing, but right then she was too tired to worry about that. She felt his arm surrounding her carefully, as if he was afraid to touch her, and she leaned more on him without stopping crying.

She kept sobbing for a few minutes, until she finally regained control of her breath and tears. She moved away from him, embarrassed.

“I ruined your shirt” she muttered. She heard him huff.

“Don’t worry ‘bout that”.

Beth nodded and went silent.

“I don’t wanna talk about what happened” she said after a while.

“Okay” he answered with a nod. She raised her eyes and looked at him.

“It’s just… I thought there was a limit for how bad a person could be” she muttered suddenly. She really didn’t want to talk about it, but for some reason, her mouth kept speaking, “I thought there was a line people didn’t cross”.

Daryl frowned.

“What line?”

“The line of other people’s lives” Beth answered, “You know, when you harm someone”.

He seemed confused.

“People have always been bad” he just said, “Everyone cares for themselves. That’s life”.

“That’s not true” she countered, “There’s still good people”.

“There aren’t good people left in this world” he replied bitterly.

“You are” Beth muttered, “You’re the best person I’ve ever met, Daryl”.

And before she could even think about what she was doing, she moved closer and pressed her lips against his softy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kiss! Too predictable? Too soon? You'll say!  
> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	14. Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Beth and dares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not been edited yet. Please, just enjoy and ignore the possible mistakes!

By the way Daryl pulled away from her; Beth would’ve sworn her lips had burned him. He stared at her intently, his eyes wide open and his jaw slightly dropped. Beth gulped to get rid of the knot which was starting to form in her throat, making it impossible to talk.

She blinked a few times, containing some ridiculous tears that were about to shed, and she looked away first.

It was her cell phone ringing which saved her from having to stay there. She got into her room and had to breathe deeply and test her voice before she picked up the phone to talk to Maggie.

She wasn’t sure how she managed to answer every question her sister asked her, because her thoughts were far away from that conversation, trying to process the fact that she had done exactly the opposite of what she had in mind, that she had acted in such an unprofessional way that it was embarrassing, and the worst, that she had kissed him and he had reacted with the same enthusiasm as if he would’ve had to walk on burning coal.

* * *

 

Her alarm clock started ringing, and even though Beth turned it off, she didn’t even try and get up. She had been staring at the ceiling the whole night, watching how the first sunrays filtered through the curtains and lit up the room. She sighed and rolled to her side, hiding from the light and burying her face against the pillow. She wanted to scream in frustration, but she told to herself that she was almost twenty-four and she couldn’t act like a sixteen-year old. She was a woman. She had to face the consequences of her acts and do the right thing.

That’s what her dad would say.

 

So she got up (a little bit reluctantly) and exited her room silently, hoping that she wouldn’t have to run into Daryl.

She was rubbing her eyes sleepily as she opened the bathroom’s door. She dropped her hand and took a step forward when she saw Daryl with his back facing her and his pants slightly down right in front of the toilet. Daryl noticed her and turned his head brusquely.

“I…” if that wasn’t the perfect moment for her dignity to die definitely, Beth couldn’t imagine what other cruelties fate had planned for her, “Sorry”.

She slammed the door and stayed there, her hand still on the knob. She wanted to hit her head against the wall, but she contained herself, instead going to the kitchen to make herself a coffee and get out of there as soon as possible.

She had things to do.

* * *

 

The apartment’s door opened and a brunette girl with a ponytail looked at her with a questioning expression.

“Hi” Beth greeted her shyly, “I’m Beth. I’m Rosita’s friend” words hadn’t finished leaving her mouth when she was already interrupting her.

“Aah” the girl just answered, “yeah, I know you. Come in”.

Beth did so and looked around her. She had never been in Rosita’s place, but she knew that she lived with too many people considering the size of her home. And her friend wasn’t exaggerating: it was a tiny place, packet out with different kinds of things. There, on a couch in the middle of the living room, there was a bundle wrapped up in a blanket.

“I’m Tara” the girl introduced herself, and Beth smiled, “Rosita’s the burrito over there”.

“Fuck off, I’m sick” the bundle answered. Beth giggled.

“That’s an excuse for being such a mess?” Tara countered, looking around her to exemplify her point. There was a small silence.

“Yeah? Well, Beth’s straight, so screwy you” Rosita replied. Tara looked at Beth and rolled her eyes.

“I’ve been dating the same chick for five years and she still doesn’t get it” Tara muttered to her, “I gotta work. Rosita, you best clean this hurricane or I swear I’m gonna reduce your fever with an iced water cube”.

Rosita’s middle finger was her comeback. Tara huffed one more time before she left.

 

Beth approached the couch and sat down carefully in the coffee table in front of the couch. Her friend smiled weakly. Yeah, she really looked bad.

“Wow, hello, nurse” Rosita said huskily, “you came to take care of me?”

“Shut up” Beth laughed. Rosita lifted her arm and took Beth’s hand between hers, “How are you feeling?”

“Awful” Rosita snorted, readjusting herself in her little nest of pillows and blankets, “Fever won’t stop going up and down and I’m always coughing. I got dizzy if I got up and I can’t eat anything without puking”.

“Whiny” Beth teased her lightly, and Rosita squeezed her hand. Beth bit her lip before she spoke again, “When Lori told me you were gone, I thought…”

There was a brief silence, and then Rosita answered.

“What did she do to you?” Beth raised her eyes and found her staring at her. Beth shook her head, “Beth, tell me”.

She gulped.

“I told her I was gonna denounce her for what she had done. She started… accusing me of all these fake things. She accused me of being drug addicted and stealing meds, and accused us both of trying to swindle the nursing’s home to get money from the accident. She said that if I did anything she’d make sure we’d both get kicked out, and she said she’d denounce Daryl and…” she stopped mid-sentence when she felt tears burning her eyes.

“Hey” Rosita said, “you know you did the right thing, don’t you?” Beth nodded jerkily.

“I know” she answered after a while, “But I’m so sorry I dragged you both into this… that I dragged you even though you have nothing to do with this, and Daryl, who’s been saving my ass over and over again. I can’t do this to you”.

“It wasn’t you, Beth” Rosita said, straightening up, “It was Dawn. That woman is who had dragged us all into this”.

A tear slid down her cheek, and Beth wiped it furiously. She wasn’t going to cry ever again. She couldn’t be weak while everyone else tried to be strong for her.

“She told me that if I came back to work and forgot everything about it, she’d forget too” Beth continued, “So I did”.

“I knew something happened” Rosita muttered. Beth nodded again.

“Rosita, how did you find out about Digoxin?” Beth asked then, approaching her friend. Rosita sighed.

“Question is how I didn’t realize before” Rosita answered, “A woman who had never had heart diseases suddenly suffers a heart attack. Everyone thought it was because of her breakdowns, but it couldn’t be that. I heard Doctor Jensen and Dawn arguing shortly after Mrs. Dixon was taken to the hospital, and I started investigating. I didn’t need to do much research: Joan’s smart. She knew from the beginning what Dawn was trying to do. So before she quitted she left a copy of every file of the elderly, dated and classified, and another copy of the stock from the last few months”.

Beth’s eyes widened.

“Really?” she asked excitedly, but then Rosita nodded sadly.

“I hid it as soon as I found it, but when I came back that day to take it… it wasn’t there anymore”.

Beth dropped Rosita’s hands.

“What’re you talking ‘bout?”

“Someone took it. God, I’m convinced Dawn knew about Joan hiding files and made sure someone watched me closely” Rosita ran a hand through her hair, “I got to read it though, and that’s how I realized something was off with Mrs. Dixon’s meds. That woman is really dangerous, Beth. Please, promise me you’re gonna be real careful”.

Beth kept silent, feeling guilty.

“I… I hit Alexis yesterday” she confessed quietly.

“What?”

“I saw her trying to inject Digoxin to Mrs. Dixon. I asked her to stop, but she laughed at me and told me I was crazy. I didn’t know what to do, so I pushed her away from Mrs. Dixon. She started trying to hit me and I pushed her strong enough to throw her to the wall. She couldn’t inject anything, but then Dawn called me to her office and…”

“And?” Rosita pressed her.

“I told her I knew what she was really doing” she answered, and Rosita’s eyes widened, astonished, “I told her she wasn’t gonna get away with it, that I had evidence”.

“Beth, oh my god, are you serious?”

“I did the right thing!”

“You just defied her! Oh my god… and what happened?”

“She suspended me without pay, she filed me and she told me she’d make sure Alexis denounced me”.

Rosita dropped her head against the pillow.

“Oh. My. God”

“We have to do something. We cannot let that woman have her own way, Rosita. This is serious, she’s killing people!”

“She hasn’t killed anyone yet” Rosita countered.

“But she will. She already tried once, and when will be the next time, who’s gonna try to kill? Do you remember what Joan told her the day she quitted? She told her that she had had to find new ways to deal with expenses”.

“That’s the most macabre thing I’ve ever heard”.

“But it’s true” Beth replied, getting up and starting pacing around the living room, “And the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. Money’s scarce and patients are numerous. When they can’t fire more people because someone could start asking questions and they need employees to keep the place running, what do they do?”

“Get rid of the biggest expenses”.

“Yeah” Beth nodded.

“It’s a retirement home” Rosita said, “No one’s gonna suspect if they die. They are already old, they have diseases, and there are no subventions. They can blame others anyway.

Rosita and Beth looked at each other, processing what they had just said.

“She’s really doin’ it” Rosita muttered.

“So we have to stop her”.

“But how?” her friend asked, sitting up. She coughed lightly, “We’d need evidence, we’d need to get into her office and find the files, and we’re not exactly invisible right now”.

“ _We_ aren’t” Beth repeated thoughtfully, and she turned around to face Rosita, who seemed to understand at the same time.

* * *

 

Beth opened her home’s door and found Daryl sitting in front of the kitchen’s table with a crossbow on it. He lifted his head when he heard her entering, and he stared at her. Beth managed to give him a little smile.

“Hi” she greeted him as she closed the door.

“Hi” Daryl answered.

Beth left her purse on the couch before she approached him and sat beside him. She observed him cleaning his crossbow silently for a few minutes. He didn’t talk either, but Beth could feel his discomfort from how intently she was looking at him.

“Daryl, we need to talk ‘bout your mom” she blurted out, and he froze a moment before he looked at her, puzzled. A part of her whispered that maybe he hoped she would talk about last night.

“She alright?” he asked huskily. Beth bit her inner cheek.

“She’s alright, but… she might not be very soon” she answered, “I know what I’m gonna tell you is gonna sound crazy, but please, let me explain it first”.

Daryl nodded and moved to watch her better. Beth opened her mouth and started talking, first stuttering and then with more confidence, not thinking so much about words and reliving what had happened those last weeks, from the first layoffs, going through the threats and Mrs. Dixon’s heart attack until she reached last day.

When she closed her mouth again, she realized he wasn’t really looking at her. His gaze was fixed in some spot behind her, and he seemed pretty absorbed by his thoughts. Beth felt the impulse of shaking him to make him react, but she refrained, even though his silence was making her nervous.

“I’m so sorry I dragged you into this, and I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner. She’s your mom and you have every right in the world to know, but I couldn’t…” she made a gesture to try to explain what she wanted to say, and then she dropped her hands to her lap and looked up at him, “M sorry”.

“’s not your fault” Daryl answered quietly. He scratched his stubble while he raised his eyes to look at her, “So that woman’s responsible for sending my mom to hospital?”

“That’s what we think” Beth replied as quietly as him and nodded, “We need proves, but right now we’re being watched”.

Daryl frowned, and then someone knocked the door. Beth hopped up and let in a very pale Rosita wrapped in a big coat. Rosita smiled devilish when she saw Daryl though. Daryl glazed at her questioningly and she shrugged. Rosita approached the couch and fell with a thud as she started unzipping her coat.

“Okay, if we’re gonna conspire, I’ll need a drink” she huffed.

“We just have beer” Beth answered.

“Enough for me” Rosita made a gesture with her hand and turned to look at Daryl, “You’re gonna come over here or are you gonna make a poor sick girl to get up?”

Daryl blinked, confused, and then he stood up hesitantly. Rosita kept an eyebrow raised the whole time until he sat on a corner of the couch. Beth came back with a beer bottle and Rosita started drinking enthusiastically.

“I decided to send precautions to hell. I’m already getting myself in trouble, so I can’t be worrying about throwing up or not. Fine” she continued, crossing her legs, “I don’t know how much Beth told you”.

“I told him enough” she answered, without sitting down with them. Rosita nodded.

“So that’s _nothing_ ” Rosita retorted, and Beth frowned. Her friend sipped her beer again and kept talking, “I’m sick and Beth’s suspended right now because she’s a violent badass”.

“Rosita-“

“No one’s gonna collaborate with us in that place because everyone thinks that my friend here is _really_ a violent badass and that she’s mentally unstable, but c’mon, seriously?” Rosita pointed at Beth, “Look at her; she’s like a little angel”.

Beth blushed when Daryl squinted at her swiftly.

“So we need you to be our eyes”.

“What?” Daryl spoke for the first time since Rosita had arrived there.

“We have a friend, Lori –maybe you know her or maybe Beth told you about her- who’s in our side and doesn’t believe Beth is really crazy. So this the plan: you’re gonna go to Rosewood under the pretext of visiting your mom, you know, being a good son and everything, and suddenly you’re going to feel sick. Lori, who’s conveniently the nurse who will watch the visit, will take you to the nursery and let you rest, and then you’ll go to Dawn’s office and get the info. Capisce?”

Beth watched the interchange of looks between Rosita and Daryl. Hers was determinate and expectant, and his was confused and half annoyed, still frowning, as usual.

“And why are you so sure I’m gonna accept?” he said, and Beth’s stomach clenched. Rosita’s eyes sparkled lightly.

“’Cause you’re actually a good dude. And if you don’t help us it’s likely that people will die, and I’m convinced you’re mom will be one of the firsts” Beth opened her mouth to scold her, but then Rosita raised her hand to stop her words, almost as if she already knew she was going to protest.

There were a few seconds of silence.

“How will you know if the office is empty?”

“We’ll make sure it is”.

“But it’s not gonna work” Daryl answered, “They know Beth lives here, they’ll watch me too. They’ll know Lori’s your friend. They’re not gonna buy it”.

“Hey, the plan’s just a sketch right now, but it’s gonna work” Rosita retorted, frowning, “It’s going to work” she repeated, almost to herself.

Beth looked at Daryl, and he looked at her.

“It _might_ work” she agreed, shrugging. Daryl huffed, burying his face between his hands for a second before he nodded lightly.

Rosita let out an enthusiasm sound and Beth smiled too.

* * *

 

It was late. They were both sitting on the couch, the TV turned on in front of them, but they weren’t actually watching it.

“You know this is crazy, right?” he asked her suddenly, and she nodded, not looking away from the TV.

“But it’s our only chance to do something”.

“It could turn on us”.

“I know that too” Beth countered, turning her head to gaze at him, “But it’s worth taking a risk to do the right thing. The good people still exist, Daryl”.

He didn’t reply, and then Beth realized she had said something very alike to what she had told him last night.

“Beth” he started, but she shook her head.

“You don’t need to say anything. I’m sorry”.

“You were goin’ through some tough shit” Daryl answered.

“I would’ve kissed you no matter what” Beth smiled sadly, and even in the semi dimness of the room she could see him flushing, “I’m not sorry I did it. I’m sorry you didn’t want me to” she shrugged lightly, trying to be casual, “It’s okay, really. I just don’t want things to change. You’re my friend and-“

Beth froze as soon as Daryl’s lips were on hers. It was a brush a lot shier than her kiss last night, but it was enough to make her stomach flutter. She felt a hesitant hand on her waist and she hastened in move closer to him and put her hand on his cheek, pressing her lips harder against his.

As soon as Daryl opened his mouth and his tongue started exploring her bottom lip, she felt the butterflies of her stomach exploding and turning into fireworks. She sighed shakily.

Daryl pulled his lips from hers, but his hand remained in her waist and he rested his forehead against hers. Beth moved her hand to his shoulder, still breathing heavily, as if she had just run a marathon. She felt laughter bubbling inside her chest and started beaming so much that her face hurt, but she couldn’t (and didn’t want to) stop.

“… maybe friends can do this too though” she finally muttered, and Daryl let out a husky chuckle.

And that time, it was her who pulled him in for a second kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Giggles like a school girl*.
> 
> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	15. Risk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm an asshole but I was going through writer's block and then I wasn't but I had started school again so sorry for the delay and forgive any mistake because it's almost 3 am here and I'm almost falling asleep.  
> Thanks for waiting and enjoy!

“Are you sure you wanna do this?” Beth asked again, biting her bottom lip nervously. Daryl nodded with a blank face, but Rosita huffed, exasperated.

“Leave him alone already! He’s gonna visit his mom, not going to war” she exclaimed bitterly. Beth stared daggers at her.

“I wouldn’t worry if he was _only_ visiting his mom” Beth countered. Rosita stood up from the couch as she rolled her eyes.

“Let’s repeat the plan: you visit your mom, totally normal. Then you pretend you’re sick. When Lori takes you to the infirmary-“

“I still don’t know how she gonna be there” Daryl cut her off.

“She’s been changing her shifts on purpose. She’s working now, so you’ll tell us when you’re there so we can tell Lori. Once she plays along, she’s going to leave you alone so you can lay down for a bit and you’ll go to Dawn’s office and look for anything useful. Meds registers, hospital reports and the files of all the patients that are in this list” and she handed him a piece of paper, “Once you have everything, you’ll get out of there and go back to the infirmary without any witnesses”.

“How will you get rid of Dawn?” Daryl asked.

“Albert will distract her” Rosita answered, smiling mischievously at her friend, “It seems like he has a soft spot for little Bethy and he doesn’t think she’s crazy. Maybe because he’s not really sane either”.

“Rosita” Beth scolded her softly, blushing, “And he doesn’t have a _soft spot_ for me. I had to bribe him with strawberries”.

Daryl snorted and looked at Beth curiously. She shrugged.

“He likes strawberries” she muttered, flushing even more.

“Well, that’s the plan: fast, simple and flawless”.

“Flawless?” Daryl raised an eyebrow, and Beth hastened in intervene before those two started arguing.

“Rosita, you’re supposed to be resting. You’re still sick” she reminded her. Rosita nodded.

“I know, I know. Tara’s gonna kick my ass if she comes back from work and I’m not in bed” she said, shrugging on her denim jacket as she approached the door. Beth hugged her tightly, “Take care”.

“I should be the one saying that to you” Beth answered without letting her go. When they finally moved away from each other, Rosita turned her head and smirked at Daryl.

“Good luck, Mr. Bond” and winked at him. Daryl frowned.

“You’re not that funny when you have snot falling off your nose” he replied quickly, and Beth swore Rosita had the lightless blush in her cheeks before she stuck out her tongue at him. Beth sighed and closed the door. She turned around to face Daryl, who was putting on his vest. However, when he felt her gaze, he raised his head.

“I know everything’s gonna be okay” she said suddenly, “It’s just I don’t want to cause you more trouble. It seems like that’s all I do lately” and smiled sadly. Daryl observed her for a moment before he approached.

“Ain’t just _your_ problems. She’s my mama” he answered, and put his hand on her hip, almost hesitantly. Beth pressed herself against him instantly, “And you just care. That’s not a bad thing”.

Beth smiled before she stood on her tiptoes to give him a peck. Two days had passed since that night and even though they hadn’t kissed again with the same passion, now he seemed more than satisfied with the idea of her touching him even so slightly and sharing soft lip brushes like that one.

“Nothing’s gonna happen” he assured her, “She’s fuckin’ nuts, but she’s harmless”.

“I dunno if nuts is the word to describe Dawn” she answered.

“Who was talking about her? I meant Rosita” Daryl replied, and chuckled when Beth poked him. He opened the door carefully, and Beth couldn’t help but kiss him softly one more time and smile, “See you soon”.

“See you, Mr. Bond” she said just as the door closed.

* * *

 

The nursing home was exactly like he had left it in his last visit. As soon as he came in, he saw a brunette woman ordering paperwork. He didn’t know how Lori looked like, so he approached her and stood in front of the counter, waiting until she finished. The woman hadn’t noticed him, so when she raised her head, she gasped, startled.

“Sorry” she apologized immediately, “I was a bit distracted”.

“Don’t matter” Daryl grunted, uncomfortable, “I came to see my mother”.

“Yes, of course. You’re Mr. Dixon, right?” she asked. Daryl nodded, and she rushed in start walking, “Come with me, please”.

Daryl followed her to room 412. The door was already open, and the old woman was lying on her bed, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, as always, and still, Daryl had the feeling that the room looked grayer than usual. The curtains were drawn, and there were no flowers or anything colorful. Everything was grey and white.

“I’ll stay here” she told him kindly.

“Why has someone to watch the visits?” Daryl asked.

“Orders from the director, Mr. Dixon” she answered, her smile never faltering.

“What happened with privacy?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that” she said, taking out headphones, “I’ll be listening to music, just pretend I’m not here”.

Daryl frowned, but he didn’t say anything else, wondering if he’d have to keep up with that theatre much longer. He sat beside his mom, but he didn’t touch her. He cleared his throat and waited for her to acknowledge him, but she was totally focused on the ceiling.

“Ma” he finally said, feeling slightly weird. Many years had passed since the last time he had called her that, “Ma, it’s Daryl”.

Her eyes moved slowly until they landed on him.

“Daryl” she smiled, raising her hand. Daryl held it hesitantly. He turned his head to check on Lori, who was looking though the window absently, those headphones on her ears, “My boy”.

“’M here” he just answered. She squeezed his hand and smiled wider.

“You hadn’t been here in awhile, sweetie…” she muttered, stroking his hand affectionately, “You’re so big”.

“It’s been twenty years, ma” Daryl answered in the same volume. She just nodded.

“You’re a man now. Remember when…?” she turned her head until her eyes recovered that lost gleam, her voice trailing off. Daryl frowned and stared at her, but his mom was totally focused on her memories, and whatever she was recalling, it wasn’t too happy, for how strongly she squeezed his hand all of a sudden.

Daryl decided that it was time to get at it, and stood up carefully, getting rid of his mom’s grip. She looked like a rag doll.

“’M not feeling well” he announced, turning around. The woman felt him staring at her and took off her earphones, “’M not feeling too well” he repeated, pretending a bit and wobbling slightly. The woman went to him immediately and tried to hold him, but he leaned over the mattress, like he was feeling dizzy.

“Sit down again, please” she told him, looking genuinely worried, “Do you want a glass of water, a coffee, a snack from the machine?”

Daryl frowned, confused.

“No, I’m… not necessary” he answered, “I think I need to lay down a bit” and looked at her significantly. She nodded.

“Of course” and offered him her arm to walk, but he shook his head. She just walked beside him down the hall, but then he saw that they walked by Dawn’s office. He turned his head brusquely to watch it disappeared as they rounded the corner and got to the entry, “Are you sure you can get to your vehicle?”

“I…” Daryl was so confused that he didn’t know what to do. He had told Rosita and Beth when he had arrived there. Why wasn’t Lori playing alone? Realization hit him like a truck, and he couldn’t help but grab the woman by her shoulders, “You ain’t Lori?”

The nurse looked terrified by that intimidating man shaking her strongly, and he moved away immediately. She shook his head, scared.

“I’m Cathy” she muttered, “Nurse Grimes had to delay her break. She’s taking inventory”.

And that was like a bucket of cold water for Daryl, because it was then when he spotted an old man down the hallway, staring at him, and then Dawn got out of her office, just in time. Daryl tried to do some gesture to the man, but he had already started hyperventilating and shaking as he fell down dramatically. Cathy hastened in help him, but then Dawn saw Daryl and walked towards him.

“Mr. Dixon” she smiled warmly, “Good to see you here. I’m Dawn Lerner, director” and she offered him her hand. Daryl wanted to rip off her hand, not shake it, but he did it quickly and refrained himself from cleaning up his hand in his pants, “I’m sure you’re so glad to see your mother’s improvement”.

He nodded as he looked around him absently, mulling options. Dawn raised her eyebrows, still smiling.

“Are you looking for someone, Mr. Dixon?”

“No” he answered, and then he signaled at the man, “Aren’t you gonna take care of him?”

“Our staff is totally capable of taking care of our patients” she assured him almost in a mechanic tone.

“I’m sure they are” some silent seconds passed, and then Dawn spoke again.

“Well, it was a pleasure to see you, Mr. Dixon. I hope you come soon” and with one last nod, she left, ordering a girl behind the counter to bring her a coffee to her office as she went. Daryl stood there, watching how the nurse got the coffee and left it in the counter before she kept writing something. Suddenly, a doctor appeared beside her, holding a briefcase.

“Haven’t you got breaks to drink coffee, nurse?” the question must have taken her by surprise, because she blinked.

“It’s for the director, doctor Jensen” she answered, looking almost scared. He frowned.

“And what are you waiting for?” he countered brusquely. She nodded energetically, startled by his rudeness, and hastened in take the coffee and head towards the office.

As soon as she left, the doctor _scanned_ Daryl and handed him some papers.

“It’s obvious that sons aren’t always like their parents” the doctor commented nonchalantly, and Daryl returned the furrowed brow.

“What?” he asked as he took the papers.

“Would you mind get out of here discretely before someone notices this?” the doctor replied, and Daryl didn’t even bother answering. He turned around and left.

* * *

 

The door opened softly and Beth stood up instantly.

“Calm down” he told her gently. Beth looked at him, looking all kinds of concerned, nervous and agitated, all at the same time.

“So?” she asked, moving around him as he shrugged off his jacket and took out the papers.

“I couldn’t get in the office, but I got this” and he gave them to her. Beth took them and raised her gaze to him, confused.

“How did you get ‘em if you didn’t enter in the office?”

“Let’s say I’m gonna kill Rosita” he just said. They both sat down on the couch as she looked over every page quickly, “Something useful?”

Beth lifted her eyes, and judging by the look in them, Daryl didn’t even need the next sentence.

“We got her” she muttered in disbelief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	16. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of an era.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to apologize in advance for taking so long to update and for the lenght of this chapter: I promise there will be longer chapters! Also, as usual: sorry for the mistakes, you know I'm not a professional translator.  
> I've been thinking a lot about this story and I think it just needs a few more chapters. I'm not 100% sure about this, I could change my mind tomorrow and say "fuck it, I'm gonna make this endless", but that's not what I want this fic to be. I think it just needs some things sorted out and that's it.
> 
> Please enjoy!

Beth had spent the whole morning at the doctors, obeying every order he gave her as her mind flew away from there.

“Well, this looks really good” the doctor said, smiling kindly. Beth hastened in returning him the smile, “Now we’ll get you a sling and you’ll have to start rehabilitation so you can start moving your arm again”.

“I’m lookin’ forward to it” Beth answered.

“I’m sure you are” the doctor started putting the sling and Beth tried to help as much as she could. However, her thoughts wouldn’t stop tracing other paths.

 

To begin with, it had been two days since Daryl’s incursion in Rosewood, but they hadn’t gone to the police yet. They had everything in that folder: medical records, patients’ files, medical discharges… and still, Beth couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was off. How could be everything so easy? And besides, why would Doctor Jensen help them? Yes, of course, there was an abysmal difference between been rude and accessory to murder, but, was he really willing to take that risk for _her_? All of her colleagues had been able to look away, why wouldn’t he?

 

And of course, Daryl himself was another problem. Truth is Beth shouldn’t be thinking about him now that they were trying to stop a psycho, but it was inevitable. Their relationship –or whatever that was- hadn’t changed in the least: they both woke up in the mornings and she would spend the day classifying and taking notes about the files while he worked. Well, maybe she would wound her arms around his neck and kiss him lightly when they both got out of their respective rooms in the mornings, or their hands would brush casually while they drank their coffees in a comfortable silence. Or Daryl would look at her like he didn’t even care if she exploded in blush, just from how intently he pierced her with his eyes. Yes, definitely that was a big change, but apart from that, they were … nothing. Daryl was still so private, and obviously, they hadn’t talked about what was going on between them.

 

The thing was Beth didn’t know what they were. Okay, they kissed, so what? They were working together to catch a dangerous woman, that could make people get close, but, did he even worry about her half of what she cared about him?

_Don’t be stupid_ , she scolded herself immediately. She didn’t have a doubt of that. She couldn’t have it. Daryl had always worried about her, even before they were friends. He had offered her his place, and he had been there to help her _every single time_. He didn’t have to –he could have just pretended she wasn’t there, without money or a roof- and still, he cared.

Why?

 

Beth got out of the doctors with more questions than answers, and she went straight home – _their_ home- to tell him about her arm.

When she got home, she found Daryl doing the ironing, a scowl of focus in his face. Beth closed the door behind her silently and sat down on the couch, resting her chin against the back of it so she could look at him.

“How did it go?”

“Good” she simply said, “How come you didn’t have to work today?”

“I didn’t have any jobs” he shrugged, “So you’re goin’ to rehab?”

Beth nodded, and then she tried to get comfortable awkwardly.

“I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s not a good idea that Mrs. Dixon… I mean your _mom_ is there” she told him hesitantly. Daryl stopped ironing and raised his head to look at her questioningly, “At least ‘til we sort out this problem with Dawn”.

A brief silence followed.

“I mean, it’s totally your choice” she rushed to correct herself, “It’s just I don’t like her being there on her own, with Dawn controlling everyone”.

“You’re right” he answered when she hadn’t even finished, “I was actually thinking the same thing”.

“Great” Beth nodded, smiling and feeling nervous for no reason. She lowered her eyes to her lap before she spoke again, “Tomorrow morning?” she asked. Daryl chuckled.

“Tomorrow morning”.

* * *

 

Beth opened her eyes to find the already familiar white ceiling. She turned her head and realized that she hadn’t only woken up an hour before her alarm rang, but also it hadn’t dawned yet. The sky was still mildly dark, and as Beth stretched herself in front of the window, her mind started racing to assimilate everything that was going to happen throughout the day.

 

She got out of her room, trying to be silent, and she headed towards the bathroom to take a refreshing shower that could make her wake up definitely. She needed to be alert.

Half an hour later, as she got rid of the knots in her hair in front of the mirror, she spotted Daryl in the reflection getting out of his room. He just took a few seconds to appear and stand beside her.

“Morning” Beth smiled, turning softly to look at him directly. He grunted his usual “morning” and leaned against the doorframe to watch her as she brushed her smooth mane. She couldn’t help but close her eyes and smile wider when she felt Daryl’s fingers running through the strands softly, almost in a loving way, burying into her hair until they found her scalp. Beth let out a relaxed giggle, and this time, she did turn around to kiss him in the cheek. It was her way to thank him a bit for being able to calm her down with just a simple gesture.

 

They had breakfast in the same comfortable silence of every morning. Beth was sipping at the last remaining of her coffee and when she did, she stood up and tried to ignore the way her heart was racing as the time to leave got closer.

“Everything’s gonna be fine” Daryl said suddenly. Beth wondered if he could actually read her mind or if she was just an open book. She turned around to face him and sighed.

“I know” she answered sincerely, “I’m just tired”.

And Daryl nodded, like he already knew that she didn’t mean that she hadn’t slept, but she had been carrying for months all the obligations that an adult had and the worry for how bad she was handling everything. She wanted to call her dad and run away towards the farmhouse, and she couldn’t help but hate herself for that

* * *

 

The bike stopped softly and Beth got off, supporting on the hand that Daryl offered her. She watched him as he got off the bike too and took the keys. He glanced at her before they both started walking together towards the building.

As soon as they entered, Beth could feel all the eyes on her. Alice, one of her colleagues, approached her carefully.

“Beth” she greeted her cautiously, “Good morning” she addressed them both then, “How’s everything?”

Beth refrained herself from giving her a bitter comeback. Alice had been one of the few people that hadn’t taken any position: she didn’t think Beth was crazy, but she didn’t criticize Dawn as actively as the others. And Beth knew exactly why. She was a single mom of two little children. She didn’t want to risk her job.

“I’m very good, thank you” she managed to smile, “I hope everything’s fine here”.

Alice shrugged.

“You know” she answered, “Did you come to see Mrs. Dixon?”

“Actually-“

“I wanted you to discharge her” Daryl blurted out. Alice blinked.

“Oh. Yes, of course” she answered, “Follow me, please. You’ll have to fill lots of forms though”.

Daryl nodded and they accompanied her towards the reception.

“Tony, can you help me find the discharge forms?” Alice asked her partner as she started taking out papers. The man stared at Beth and then he opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish out of the water. He took a few seconds to react and help out his colleague, still looking at Beth, “Okay, here they are” and she handed him a pen.

Daryl had just started writing when a scream reverberated from the hallway. Beth turned her neck so brusquely that she felt a white pain running through her column, but she forgot about any pain as soon as Alice and Tony ran towards the source of the noise. Mr. Calhoun got out and started yelling so they would let him get in again.

“My wife!” he screamed desperately. Beth looked at him in disbelief, “She won’t wake up! Somebody help her!”

“Mr. Calhoun, please calm down” one of the nurses said, approaching him, but the old man moved away brusquely.

“Don’t touch me! My wife needs help!”

Beth spotted Lori as soon as she appeared there, alarmed by the yells. Doctor Jensen got in the room, followed closely by Dawn, who was practically pushing people away, and a small crowd started forming around the door, which was closed again.

“Beth, what are you doing here? What’s wrong?” Lori asked when she was in front of her and Daryl. She looked really worried, intercalating looks at her and at the old man.

“Mrs. Calhoun” she managed to say before the silence interrupted everything else. Dawn got out of the room in silence, closing the door behind her, and Beth thanked internally that she had the counter to lean onto, because she was positive that she was going to fall down as soon as realization hit her like a truck. She felt Daryl stiff when the woman approached them.

“Valerie” she called one of the nurses, “prepare some tea. Marie, take him to my office”.

They both obeyed and Dawn did like she was going to get in her office, but then she turned and looked directly at them. Beth’s hands were clenched in two tight fists, and she could feel hot blood surging in the wounds that her nails were causing in the palms of her hands.

“You” Beth murmured.

“You shouldn’t be here, Mrs. Greene” she just said, and did hint of opening her office’s door, but then Beth moved forward.

She knew everyone was staring at them, and she also had felt Daryl trying to stop her, but in those moments Beth couldn’t pay attention to anything else besides her. It was almost like her movement made Dawn react. She approached her as well, and both women stopped when they were just a step away.

“You’re a monster” she whispered it so quietly that only Dawn could hear.

“I save lives” Dawn answered firmly. It wasn’t until then that Beth realized how perturbed she truly was. She really believed that she was doing some good with that. She thought she was benefiting some persons by killing others.

She felt goose bumps running through her.

 

Beth noticed Doctor Jensen getting out of the room and watching the scene by afar. Beth looked at Dawn again, not caring about that man right that second. And a terrifying thought assaulted her.

_You just have to move your arm and you can take the pen._

_The jugular is just there._

Her heart stopped beating for a second. And then it started again, just as she inhaled deeply and stepped left, slow and decidedly. Dawn scanned each one of her moves, trying to guess what she’d do next.

“I get it now” she said bitterly, nodding. Dawn frowned, and Beth moved further towards the counter.

It was then when she felt Daryl hugging her from behind, encircling her with his arms and pressing her against him carefully.

“No” he just murmured, and Beth deflated, “No” he repeated, and it was then when the first tears started falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so yeah, the same title as the episode, but definitely not the same ending, right? I made a few references to the show in this chapter and idk if you'll see everything, but well, that's okay.   
> I wanted to explain because I know this may be confusing: Beth wasn't actually going to kill Dawn. In the heat of the moment, she would've thought that all she wanted to do was to kill her, and I think it's logical: Dawn has ruined her life and has killed people (or tried to). 
> 
> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	17. A new day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: First of all, I'm translating from my phone and it's so unbelievable awkward, so sorry about any extra mistakes. I hope you like this chapter and forgive me for taking so long to update!  
> DISCLAIMER: TWD and its characters are none of my property, but Bethyl was, is and will be canon.

When Beth's eyes fluttered open, the first thing she noticed was the darkness surrounding her. The second thing was the weight of a limb curled around her waist, and finally, a warm breath against her cheek.

For when her eyes had accostumdz to the dim light of the bedroom, she had already realized what was going on, and memories flooded her mind slowly.

Rick had arrived to Rosewood, having been called anonymously for a "heated argument". When he got there and fully understood the gravity of the situation, he tried to get the details, but before he could interrogate Beth, Daryl took her to his mom's room. Beth was white as a sheet, and Daryl just sat beside her, holding her hand and being there.  
Lori had appeared and approached Beth, placing a hand on her shoulder gently and stroking her hair with love. Beth wasn't aware of her tears; they just ran freely down her cheeks.  
"Go home" Lori commanded her softly, but Beth shook her head, "I'll take care of her. I promise nothing's gonna happen to her".  
It wasn't until Daryl got her up that Beth stopped struggling. She leaned against him unconsciously and he let her, passing an arm around her waist to help her walk down the hall.

Beth turned her head one moment to look at Dawn. It was enough to see her whispering quickly to Rick, who looked angrier by the second. Their eyes met for an instant, but then she felt Daryl's firm grip stiff slightly around her.  
"I'm okay" Beth whispered (at the beginning, she didn't even recognise her hoarse and broken voice) and he nodded, but his hold didn't falter for a moment until they were back in the truck.  
Beth was staring intently at her shoes. She was trying to keep her breathing even, but her heart was still pounding. She gripped her seat tightly while she focused on not suffocating. But why wouldn't air get to her lungs?  
"Beth" she heard him say, but she was just shaking her head, "Beth, you gotta breathe, girl".  
Her jaw was so clenched that she could hear her gritted teeth.  
"Keep breathin'. That's it, slow" Daryl kept murmuring, in such a soothing way that even him looked surprised. However, his quiet murmurs were enough for her breathing and pulse to go back to normal, "Everything's fine".  
"I was gonna-"  
"You're here" he cut her off, "Don't matter".

Hours later, when Beth found herself curled around Daryl, some kind of alarm resonated on her mind. "What's going on?" she thought.  
Slowly, images came back. Images of her opening the door slowly, entering, almost like she was heading to her own funeral. Her body felt boneless and heavy as she walked towards the bathroom. She closed the door after her. Her mind was trying to cope with everything in the middle of that craziness. The terrifying notion of what she had been about to do back there made her feel...  
No, she forced herself to think as she stripped off and got in the shower. She stayed there almost half an hour, like she was trying to rinse off the events of that afternoon.

When she got out, with her damp hair sticking to her body and making her shudder, she found Daryl in her room, preparing her bed carefully. Beth would've smiled in another circumstances. However, she couldn't help but raise her eyebrows.  
"What're you doin'?" Beth asked. Daryl turned and looked at her befote he shrugged, "You don't have to do this. I'm not an invalid".  
"I know" he answered immediately. Beth sighed and looked away first, "C'mon, you need to rest".  
She nodded then, and headed to the bed. Beth looked at him significantly when he tried to cover her up with the blanket, and moved away slightly.  
"Night" he murmured, and made to go, but then Beth's hand closed around his forearm.  
"Don't go" she almost pleaded, "I don't wanna be alone" she added quietly.  
Daryl stared at her in a way she couldn't decipher, but when she moved so he could have room in the mattress, his expression was of completely shock.  
"Daryl, please" Beth whispered, "don't leave me".  
Another second, and then he crouched down and started unlacing his boots. Beth smiled softly when he laid down and turned off the lamp. They were both on their sides, facing each other.   
"Today..." she started, but then she stopped, not sure of what to say, or if she even should say anything, "I thought I was gonna hurt Dawn. I really wanted to" she whispered it so quietly that Daryl struggled to understand her.  
"That woman deserves any harm she can receive".  
"Do you think they'll catch her?" Beth asked then.  
"Sooner or later they will" Daryl answered, "and with all of the evidence, I think it'll be rather sooner".  
Beth sighed heavily, closing her eyes and leaning against him.  
"If you hadn't been there, I would've done something stupid" she muttered, burying her face in his chest. Daryl's hand fell on her hip easily.  
"You would've got by just fine. You're tough" he answered. They were both about to fall sleep.  
"You've made me tough" Beth whispered, holding him tightly, "Thank you".  
Daryl held her too and inhales her deeply.  
"You've made me happy".  
Beth's eyes shot open, her heart pounding, but Daryl was already asleep.  
"You make me happy too" and tears sprung in her eyes.

* * *

 

So next morning, when Beth woke up and found Daryl curled around her, and memories invaded her mind, lots of feelings made their way through her chest.  
You've made me happy.  
Her lips curved in a smiled as soon as Daryl opened his eyes. He returned her the smile and rubbed his eyes.  
"Mornin'", he said, "Why are you so happy?"  
But Beth said nothing. Before he could open his mouth, she kissed him, pouring every feeling into him.  
She felt his surprise before he kissed her back and his arms tightened around her waist. Beth whimpered and tried to press herself more against him, marveling at the way Daryl shivered when she opened her mouth and passed her tongue around his lower lip.  
"Beth" he whispered, but she just wasn't thinking. She rolled until she was on top of him. Daryl placed a hand on the back of her head to deepen the kiss, while his other hand traced her column. And then, he stopped.  
"Beth".  
She moved away slightly.  
"What's wrong?"  
"This isn't..." he looked embarrassed. Beth put a hand on his cheek and caressed it, "this isn't right. Not now".  
"Now seems like the perfect moment for me" she declared, kissing him in the jaw and over his face.  
"You don't owe me anything" he pointed out. Beth stopped so she could look properly at him.  
"But I want this" she assured him. He should realise she was totally convinced, for he sat up with her still straddling him, "and I want you" she added right before he covered her mouth with his.

She felt one of his hands move from her waist and snake up until he found what he was looking for, and then Beth gasped.  
Daryl just smirked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and please leave a comment!


	18. Mistakes and damages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little and very necessary talk. Confessions, emotions and the truth at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really sorry for updating so late. I lost my inspiration for this story in the middle of its "climax" and for a while I didn't want to write just for doing so. I wanted to give this story a good ending, and even though this is not the final chapter (we're nearing it) it kinda is the end of some plots, we can finally answer some questions.
> 
> I never recommend music for chapters because it's such a personal decision but I think that "Touch" by Daughter and "Made of Stone" by Matt Corby are so fitting.

When Beth opened her eyes again, there was no light through the windows. Beside her, Daryl snored softly. For once, Beth felt totally rested. She got up until she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and then she stretched out, sighing of satisfaction. She stood up to find her underwear and some pajama shirt to wear, and then she went to the living room. The blinds and curtains were open, so the room was slightly illuminated by the street lights.  
Beth decided right then that she needed a cup of coffee, no matter what time it was. She was searching for a spoon when she started hearing buzzes. The girl started looking for the source of the sound, and soon she localized her phone, buried under the couch’s cushions. It was Rosita.  
“Yes?”  
“Oh my god, I’m so glad to hear your voice” her friend exclaimed from the other side of the line, “I thought you were at jail or something like that. I learnt what happened at Rosewood” a brief silence appeared, “I am so sorry, Beth. I really am”.  
“No need to feel sorry for me” she assured Rosita, “This is the first time in weeks that I feel good”.  
“Is that so?” Rosita’s voice turned mischievous, “Does that have something to do with the handy hottie?”  
Beth fought back a smile.  
“Maybe” and in that moment, Daryl got out of the bedroom, “Hey, I’ll call you later, okay?”  
“A’right. Good night”.  
Beth hung up and realized that it was only ten o’clock. Still, she was surprised they’d slept so much.  
“Hi” she greeted him shyly. Daryl just nodded and headed toward the bathroom. Beth couldn’t help the slight sting of doubt in her chest. Were they going to pretend nothing had happened? Or maybe it had been nothing to him? She forced herself to push those thoughts away. Daryl had never been the talkative, affectionate kind. He was introverted and much shier than she was. She couldn’t expect him to open up suddenly just because they had…  
Beth blushed at the memory. She didn’t know who that determined Beth was. She had always considered herself very awkward with boys. She had dated Jimmy almost her entire life and it had been him who had showed interest and pursued her until she had given in. Of course, she had never tried to seduce a man.  
That’s exactly what Daryl is, she thought as she went back to the kitchen, a man.  
Her mind started flying far, far away, a few years before. When she had first started dating Jimmy, he was just a boy. Just like her. They were two kids pretending to know what love is. Throughout those years, she had yearned for their relationship to be true, for that affection to turn into love. In a love full of passion, pure, real, not the dearness of two friends, of childhood affairs.  
Even when she was a little girl, she had known she wanted to move on. She had never wanted to stay at the farm, at her town. She loved her family, and she was happy there, but deep in her heart she knew that she needed to find her own place. And as she kept growing, and her body and mind were changing, her head turned into something cloudy and confusing and she started experimenting aches and unpleasantness that she had never acknowledged as a child. Her relationship with Jimmy, just like her too-small clothes, had finally turned too tight.  
He wanted to go one way, and she wanted the other one. Maybe, in another circumstances, one of them would have stepped forward and tried to fix things. That’s what her mom always said anyway, and she had always nodded, not really listening. But then, the day before her departure to Newborn, he appeared at her bedroom doorway. Without saying even hello, he sat down on her desk chair. Beth stopped packing her stuff for a moment, waiting for him to talk, but then she turned around and kept going. They stayed silent. Beth finally zipped up the suitcase and spun around, facing him with a blank expression. And she remembered her mother’s words. She wondered if he was there to step forward. She even wondered if she’d cower and try to fix everything. Jimmy would treat her well. They’d get married, they’d have children. They would surely stay at their hometown. Jimmy would take over the farm and she could do what she wanted, maybe stay with the kids. And, according to some, it wouldn’t have been a bad life. She would’ve lived many, many years. She would’ve loved her children. She would’ve always kept a space in her heart for Jimmy. Everything would have been calm, controlled, moderated. For someone who had nothing, that was tempting.  
But Beth remembered all those nights staring at the ceiling and feeling the need to die just from imagining that future. All those evenings dreaming and hoping for something else. The surprising happiness she had found at college. The inexplicable want that consumed her every time she thought of getting out again. Life with Jimmy would be simple, nice; but her heart would never speed up just from seeing him. She’d love her children; but there would be days when, as every parent, she would wonder what could have happened if she hadn’t had them, and, unlike most parents, she would regret not taking the other path. She’d spend her whole life thinking “what if…?”, and even if she lived a hundred years, it would pass both incredibly fast and tortuously slow. She’d observe the wrinkles under her eyes and she wouldn’t feel wiser, fuller of truth and experience. She would see cowardice, conformity. And Jimmy would treat her right, but, wouldn’t come the day when they’d hold a grudge? Resenting themselves for not doing things different, and each other for not allowing them to live more. Beth would never experience true love, just like him.  
And doesn’t everyone deserve to live that at least once?  
So, when Jimmy got up from the chair, Beth just approached him and held him tightly, not caring if she was being too brusque. A few seconds after that, she felt him wrapping his arms around her and holding her just as tightly. Two kids that, come to adulthood, had to say goodbye and start their own lives.  
It had been more than a year ago, and Beth didn’t wake up a single day thinking that she had taken the wrong decision. Regretting not stepping forward.  
It had been the first time in her twenty-two years that she had done what she really wanted.  
She was so absorbed in her own memories that she didn’t hear Daryl leaving the bathroom and getting in the bedroom again, a towel wrapped around his waist. She finished her coffee in a few sips and she headed towards the bedroom, not even thinking that he could be inside. She opened the door suddenly, just in time to catch a glimpse of Daryl’s scarred back.  
For a moment, she was static, not blinking or even breathing. Daryl turned his neck and looked at her through his hair. Beth couldn’t read his expression, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Those were deep, long mark, made on purpose. They ran across his whole back, and some even continued underneath the towel. So dark and old that they could have been made even before she was born.  
Seconds passed by without any of them moving or saying anything. Beth opened her mouth several times, but at the end she closed it, unable to find the right words. Daryl fully turned around and their eyes met.  
Beth hesitated just a moment, but then, she found herself stepping forward. One more step, and then another, until she was in front of him. She raised her neck to look at him, and then she lifted her hand until it was pressed against his pectoral, covering his tattoo. A few seconds later, his hand, much larger, covered hers, caressing her fingers gently.  
Beth lowered her eyes to their hands and smiled.  
“Do you want a coffee?” she asked him. He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but just nodded.  
  
***  
  
“My dad…”  
Daryl looked just as surprised as her from his sudden words. Beth moved her head from his shoulder and looked at him, trying to encourage him to go on. They were cuddled up on the couch, and Beth had been about to drift off to sleep.  
“My mama had my brother when she was eighteen. She didn’t have shit, neither did my ol’ man, so they moved to this fucked up cabin in the middle of the woods. And they had me” he exhaled suddenly, as if he hadn’t used breath to talk, “My dad was a mean sumbitch. My mama liked her bottle too much. She spent the days wasted, sleeping on the fucking chair. My dad arrived and saw her like that, and he would… he messed her up. But she could barely stand up, and she couldn’t react, so what was the fun in that?” he laughed darkly, “So he had two nice boys to take his anger out”.  
Beth hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she felt her lungs burning.  
“Merle left and disappeared. I just… hid in the woods and hoped my dad wouldn’t find me. And then one day my mom fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand and she burned that fucking cabin down. Firemen almost couldn’t get her out in time, and we moved to a trailer. I left too when I was sixteen and followed Merle around. Doing nothing” he turned around to look at her, “I was nobody. Nothin’. Just some redneck asshole with a bigger asshole for a brother. One day, Merle got in a big too trouble to solve and went to jail. Twelve years” he muttered, “I didn’t… I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do”.  
She swallowed down the lump in her throat. He didn’t need her pity, so she clenched her hands in fists until her knuckles turned white, and then she met his eyes again. She wasn’t going to let him down. She was going to be there as long as he wanted her.  
“I hadn’t seen my mama since I was sixteen. And then some girl called me and started lecturing me” Beth couldn’t help giggling, and Daryl smirked, “I thought… I thought I would never forgive her”.  
“So” Beth started, testing the waters, “was your dad who…?”  
“That fucker probably threw her out the window, yeah” he answered, reading her mind. Beth breathed in deeply, trying to process everything. Finally, she intertwined her fingers with his, “I don’ want him to get in between”, Beth looked at him questioningly, “What that piece of shit did to me, to my mama. I don’t want him to get in between”.  
Between us, Beth added in her mind. With as much gentleness as she could manage, she moved until her chin was resting against his shoulder, and then she parted her lips to whisper:  
“It’s okay, Daryl. He’s not here. He’s not here anymore”.  
Daryl leaned into her, and Beth happily let him. Somehow, he ended up with his head on her lap. Beth started stroking his hair and stubble, marveling when he closed his eyes. He looked so peaceful.  
Minutes went by, and it looked like Daryl was asleep or about to. Beth wetted her lips and spoke again:  
“I tried to kill myself when I was eighteen” she murmured, in such a quiet voice that she thought he hadn’t heard. But then he seemed to stop breathing for a moment, “As I grew up, I felt like something was wrong with me. I just wanted to let myself go, but I had family, and friends, and responsibilities. I couldn’t let them down. So I managed to go through a few years. And finally, when I finished high school… I felt like I could finally allow that weight on my chest to drown me. Easy as that, you know? Just allow it to eat me up inside” Beth felt her throat impossibly tight just from remembering, “I didn’t think of myself as anything special. I was a burden for my family, or that’s what I thought. Not as awesome as Shawn, not as amazing as Maggie. I was just little Bethy, the one that needs to be taken care of. So one day, while my parents were out, I went to the bathroom to take a shower, and I saw my reflection in the mirror and…” she closed her eyes, almost hearing the sound of the glass breaking, “My brother had the perfect timing and arrived for a visit surprised. He found me bleeding out in the bathroom”.  
She felt wetness in her cheeks, and realized she was crying. For the first time in what seemed like ages, she didn’t hate herself for doing so.   
“I regret every day for doing such harm to my family. But I regret even more what I did to myself” she added quietly, “It took me a long time to understand that… I am a good person. I have things to offer and to live. I am strong. Being me it’s more than enough. And I don’t wanna pretend to be a machine unable to feel. I feel, and I suffer, and I can experiment happiness. Because I am… I am alive. I’m really here” she smiled and then sniffled. Her gaze was fixed on the wall, and she wondered if Daryl would be staring at her like she was mental, “After that, of course, my family wouldn’t listen to me. They started overprotecting me even more and they didn’t even want me to go to college. But I did, and that was exactly what I needed: to get away”.  
She stretched her wrist in front of them and took off her bracelets. Daryl wrapped his hand around it and took it to his chest.  
“It’s okay, Beth” Daryl muttered, leaning more against her, “You’re here”.  
Beth nodded, not even trying to contain the sobs that washed over her body.  
  
She rested her forehead over Daryl’s and breathed shakily.  
“I love you”.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment and tell me what you think!


	19. New beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally here. Next chapter will be the end of this story, guys! Thanks to everyone who was always there supporting this little story.   
> Please enjoy and forgive the mistakes!

Daryl served both cups of coffee carefully and took them to his bedroom. Beth was peacefully asleep, stretched out so she was occupying most of the bed. He couldn’t help but smile just by seeing her so relaxed. Ever since they’d met, Daryl couldn’t remember a single time when Beth wasn’t stressed.

 

The night before they’d stayed a while in silence before they had finally decided to go to sleep, exhausted by the overwhelming emotions. Daryl was still trying to process everything that had happened –talking about his past, about what his old man had done to him, why he hadn’t talked to his mom for years- and trying to understand Beth’s own demons. Never in a million years would Daryl’ve guessed that this shy and sweet girl had tried to kill herself. He just couldn’t wrap his head around it. Daryl remembered what he had first thought of her: that she was some nosy girl that talked too much and thought she knew him… yes, the first time they met Daryl was divided in two, annoyed and confusingly fascinated by that girl who everyone seemed to treat like she was made of glass.

_But Beth is strong_ , he thought. How could she not be? She overcame her own hell and found a reason to keep going. She decided to put some distance between the people she loved the most even though it hurt because she knew it was the best. How could have he doubted her for a second? She had been the only person in his whole life that had given a shit about him, that had tried to help him and his mom, and just because she was like that. She made people happy.

She made him happy.

 

Daryl just regretted one thing from the night before: not answering Beth’s statement.

_I love you._

She had said it, and immediately after he had thought “I love you too”, but the words just couldn’t get out. After all those years, and being and adult and having Beth saying it first, Daryl felt again like a ten year old boy terrified of expressing his feelings because he’d get beaten up. Because he knew that no one would love him back, and he kind of got it because who the hell would love him?

 

Deep down, buried underneath the hatred and the rage to this dad, Daryl couldn’t help but wish that that son of a bitch had loved him just a bit. That his mom had protected him, maybe that Merle had stayed. But none of them did, and how could he love himself, how could he believe that someone as good as Beth could? He wasn’t more than a mess that should’ve faded away years ago.

 

Beth stirred in her dreams, murmuring and turning to face him. Daryl left both cups in the nightstand and sat in the edge of the bed, trying to swallow the lump of his throat.

_Time and patience._

Daryl closed his eyes and breathed out shakily in a vain attempt of slow down his heart.

_You don’t have to do this alone._

_Thanks. For everything._

There were a couple of things that Daryl didn’t notice at first. Like the small figure that stretched out and sat behind him. Like the thin arms that wrapped him up with strength, resting her head against his back. Or like the strange moisture running down his cheeks. The inexplicable temblor of his chest. Was he… was he crying?

But he didn’t cry. His father had taught him that in the toughest way possible.

Dixons didn’t cry.

 

Another sob racked through his body with more violence, and Beth tightened her embrace, not letting go.

“I love you” he managed to say. He felt her nod.

“I love you too”.  

   

* * *

“What did she say?” Daryl asked as soon as Beth ended the phone call with Rosita. She turned around and smiled with tiredness before she sat down next to him.

“They suspended Dawn until they solve everything” she answered, resting her head on his shoulder. Daryl frowned.

“That’s it? She didn’t get fired? Not even a trial?”

“She’ll have to answer to a lot of questions, sure, but while they try to prove what she’s done…” she didn’t finish the sentence, but Daryl understood, “At least I know that these poor people won’t be depending on Dawn. I’m happy”.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You wanna get back to your work, don’t ya?” Beth shrugged.

“I guess, but that’s not a priority. Right now all I care about is that Dawn pays for what she’s done and about the elderly”.

“But what about you?” Daryl insisted.

“Wow, what’s going on with you?” Beth laughed a bit and moved away to look at him.

“I just say that… you’re always making sacrifices for everyone. You should think ‘bout yourself for once. You love your job and you sure wanna go back”.

“Of course I love my job and I’d love to come back, even after everything that’s happened, but… I’m a bit scared, you know? When I left, half of the residence hated me, and the other one wouldn’t talk to me so they wouldn’t get in trouble”.

“Fuck ‘em” Daryl exclaimed decidedly. Beth snorted and shook her head.

“I need some time to get used to all of this. So many things have happened that I could use some days off to clear my head. With the residence, my colleagues…”  She lifted her eyes, “With you”.

Daryl put his head in the back of her neck and kissed her softly. Beth rested her hands on his cheeks and returned the kiss with affection. When they separated, Daryl put a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Whatever happens, I’m with you” he assured her in a whisper. Beth smiled.

“Does that mean that I can introduce you to my family?”

“Well, since my mom likes you better than me, I think it’s payback time” Daryl answered. Beth laughed out loud and kissed him again.

              

* * *

Daryl stopped the bike and stood there, waiting amongst the other parked vehicles. He made sure he wasn’t late, and just in time, the door opened and Merle Dixon got out of prison.

Daryl was surprised by how old he looked. He’d spent two years in jail but he looked like it had been ten. However, he walked with the same calm and arrogance as always.

Daryl started the bike again, and Merle turned around immediately, spotting him. Neither of them said anything for several seconds, and then Merle everything but run towards him. The youngest of the Dixon thought Merle was going to try and tackle him, but when he was a few feet away he stopped. He definitely seemed pissed off.

“Where the hell were ya, lil’ brother?” he grinned, “I knew you wouldn’t fail me. C’mon, time to celebrate. Uncle Merle is back!”

“We need to talk, Merle. Hop on” Daryl instructed with a serious expression. Merle blinked, confused.

“Who the fuck are you?”

 

* * *

 

 They both sat at the bar, staring at their beers.

“I don’t know what kind of shit you got in your head by the hot nurse, but I’m not going” Merle exploded suddenly. Daryl suppressed a sigh.

“Whatever, Merle. But if you wanna stay at mine you need to see her first”.

“We’ve spent almost twenty years without knowing shit from her, and now you wanna play perfect family? What the fuck’s wrong with ya?”

“What’s wrong with me” Daryl turned, getting more annoyed by the second, “is that I’m fucking fed up with your bullshit. I’ve been following you around and this is the first time that I’m doing what _I_ want, and that includes having her around” he made a pause and took a chug of his beer to calm down, “You’re my brother and I’ll always be there for you, but I can’t negotiate with this, Merle”.

They fell silent after that, but finally Merle exhaled until his nostrils flared.

“A’right, okay. Goddamnit, but you pay for these beers, you hear? Fucking…” he growled.

Daryl took out his wallet trying not to smile.

 

* * *

 

 

 Daryl opened the door of the apartment.

“Stay here, okay? And don’t even think about it” he added when his brother took out a cigarette.

“Fuck” Merle repeated for the umpteenth time that day.

Daryl came in and closed the door behind him. Beth was on the couch, playing guitar and humming quietly. When she heard the door she smiled and got up to kiss him.

“Hey. What did you do today?” she asked him. Daryl breathed in.

“Would it be okay with you if my brother stays here for a few days?” he blurted out. Beth blinked.

“Merle?” she answered. Daryl nodded, and Beth’s face lit up, “Is he out there?”

Daryl tried to answer, but before he got the chance Beth was already outside. Merle turned around, smoking and throwing the ashes inside a flower pot.

“Hi” Beth said, “Nice to meet you, I’m Beth” and she took out her hand, her smile never dropping like she was actually enchanted to meet him. Merle exhaled the smoke and stared at her, confused, before he chuckled.

“I get it now, lil’ brother” and he shook Beth’s hands, “My pleasure, princess”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


	20. Hi

Beth stopped at the door while Daryl and Merle came into room 412. When he noticed she had dropped his hand, Daryl turned around and looked at her questioningly. Beth shrugged.

“This is something between you three” she explained. Daryl frowned and shook his head.

“If there’s anyone who deserves to see her after all this time, that’s you” he countered, already pushing her inside. Beth let him:  she couldn’t deny that she had missed Mrs. Dixon really bad. When she had been working there, she had always considered her as one of her favorite patients despite of her difficult personality. That, added to all the things that had happened throughout the last months, had made Beth bond in some strange way to that old woman who managed to communicate with her even if she barely spoke.

 

However, she still hesitated for a couple seconds more before she took the final steps to get to the side of her bed, where she slept. Merle was standing on the other side, looking so pale it was alarming.

“Mrs. Dixon” Beth whispered like she had done every morning when she came into her room. She put a hand on her shoulder and shook her with extreme delicacy until her wrinkled eyelids opened heavily. She blinked, her stare lost somewhere in the ceiling, and then she turned her head towards Beth.

“Hello, sweetie” she greeted her, her voice weak, “Where were you?”

Beth felt a lump forming on her throat. She couldn’t imagine how lonely she had must felt while Beth had been away, with Dawn in charge.

“I’ve been… sorting out some issues” Beth answered, not daring to raise her voice. She smiled, “Today I bring people with me”.

“My Daryl” Mrs. Dixon smiled then, stretching out her hand. He stepped up and took it between his own, caressing the back of her hand with fondness.

“And… Merle” Beth added. The woman didn’t seem to understand at the beginning. Beth pointed at the eldest brother, and then, Mrs. Dixon seemed to be as lucid as any of them, for she turned around so brusquely Beth feared she had hurt herself.

“Merle?” she repeated with shaky voice. Merle shifted his weight from one foot to another, uncomfortable.

“Hey” he said, not approaching her. Beth couldn’t help but widen her smile: in these twenty-four hours she had shared a roof with Merle, the only thing she had figured out was his lack of shyness and how much he loved to talk, especially about himself. He was the opposite of Daryl.

The girl looked at him and intertwined her hand with Daryl’s. He returned her stare and kissed her on the temple, pressing her tightly to his side.

“I’m so sorry” the old woman said all of a sudden, her eyes shining with tears. She looked back and forth between her two sons, “If I could go back…”

“But you can’t” Merle interrupted her. Beth felt her heart squeezing painfully, afraid he might say something that would break his mother, “You can’t undo what he did to us”.

“Merle” his brother said as a warning, but Merle ignored him.

“You don’t have ta’ live everyday with-“

“Don’t” Beth cut him off, feeling furious. He raised his eyes, not believing it.

“What did you just say?”

“That’s enough” she kept going, not even flinching, “Wasn’t it bad enough? Didn’t you have hate for a lifetime to keep unburying all this _shit_?” Daryl was surprised to hear her cuss, but he didn’t stop her, “You have to… you have to put it away”.

Beth thought Merle would start insulting her and yelling at any time, but he didn’t. He just stared at her with a deep frown. Mrs. Dixon shed a silent tear, and then, Merle stormed out.

“Wait here” Daryl said, and he followed after his brother. Beth took the old woman’s hand, trying to calm her.

“Everything’s gonna be just fine. They’re here, okay?” she said, attempting to smile and failing.

* * *

 

Beth sighed while she waited for the cup of coffee to cool down in her hands. Rosita appeared behind her and squeezed her arm fondly.

“So you’ve finally bought a new coffee machine, haven’t you?” she asked, raising her cup so her friend could see it. Rosita laughed.

“Yeah, at least we got that. But, you know, nothing’s the same since…” Rosita stopped, and Beth was so glad for it. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to talk about it yet, “So, we got back to work, everything’s fine… kinda. Well, excepting Lori, who’s been puking at home for two days” and she giggled, “That’s why I’m never gonna have kids”.

 “We’ll see” Beth teased her. She smiled. That was so familiar that it was easy to pretend that nothing had happened and they were just two friends taking a coffee break.

“I noticed you’ve come here as a family visit. How was that?” Rosita asked. Beth took a sip of her coffee, burning her tongue so she would have some more time.

“It… happened” she just said. Rosita raised an eyebrow and Beth snorted, “Let’s just say that his brother is not really open, that’s it”.

“If I recall correctly, Daryl wasn’t a teddy bear either when you met him” her friend replied.

“But Daryl’s nothing like his brother. They’re like day and night. What am I supposed to do? Am I even supposed to anything?” Beth left her cup on the counter, “I don’t wanna meddle”.

“I think you’re as part as that family as any of those guys”, Rosita shrugged, “You took care of their mama for almost a year like she was your blood. Damn, you brought them together. Besides, you’ve already meddled a lot” she added.

“So tell me what to do” Beth sighed.

“Go step by step, learning every day. That Merle is your boyfriend’s brother, right?” Beth nodded, “So he’s your in-law, your family. You need to spend time with him and help him so he can see he has to leave all the bad things in the past”.

“That’s what I told him! But he stormed out and Daryl went after him and neither of them is back yet and…” she cut herself off, confused. She didn’t want to imagine a situation where Daryl had to choose. Rosita bent over the counter and nodded, thoughtful.

“Do you remember what you told Daryl every time he freaked out because you wanted him to be closer to his mom?”

Beth frowned, not following, but then she recalled.

“Time and patience” she muttered.

“Time and patience” Rosita repeated. She bent over more so she could kiss Beth’s cheek, “I gotta go. Call me later?”

Beth nodded, and soon Rosita had disappeared around the corner, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

* * *

 

She found Daryl outside a few minutes after, resting against the wall and smoking viciously. Beth knew he had heard her coming, but he didn’t acknowledge her, too focused on finishing one of many cigarettes. Beth leaned against the same wall, beside him, and she tried to take his smoke.

“What are you doin?” Daryl asked, moving it away from her. Beth shrugged.

“Can I have some?”

“You don’t smoke”.

“Nope” Beth shook her head, “But I used to when I was in college”, Daryl raised his eyebrows, “Sometimes. C’mon, I’m old enough”.

Daryl hesitated a bit before he gave in. Beth inhaled deeply, dropping her head against the wall.

“It went wrong?” she asked, exhaling the smoke. Daryl took the cigarette again and grumbled something, “Don’t hmpf me, Daryl” she giggled when Daryl tried to hold back a smile. That was some progress, “Tell me”.

“The jackass left. Who knows where is he gonna crash tonight. If he sleeps, that’s it. He just got out of jail, he’s no saint”.

Beth nodded but said nothing. It was Daryl’s turn to stare at her.

“You’re not gonna say anything?”

“I think you know what I’m thinking” she countered. Daryl took another puff, “I’ve been doing some thinking about other things too”.

“About what?” he encouraged her. Beth breathed in deeply.

“Just going to my parents’. I haven’t seen them in ages”.

“You should” Daryl answered. Beth moved away from the wall.

“I’ve also thought about moving back in my hometown” she added in a much quieter voice. Daryl threw the cigarette and stubbed it out with his boot, but he didn’t interrupt her, “I don’t wanna work here anymore. Too many things have happened to come back and pretend it’s all great. And… you know, you asked me when I was gonna start thinking about myself. I reckon now I am”.

“Running away?” he cut her off curtly. Beth frowned.

“No” she said, “After I tried to kill myself they wouldn’t let me breathe. That’s why I left in the first place, to clear my mind. But now I’m okay, I’m so much better, and I feel I don’t belong here. Does it make sense?” she asked, her heart thundering. She didn’t want to argue.

Daryl waited for a couple seconds before he nodded.

“’s your home” he stated.

“Yeah” she muttered, letting out a humorless laugh.

They kept silent for a few minutes before Beth spoke again.

“I don’t wanna ask you… I know everything in your family is upside down now and you’re just starting to spend time with your mom, and I know Merle needs you”.

“You know I’d go with you” Daryl muttered, not looking her in the eye.

“That’s why I can’t ask you” and she shrugged, like her heart wasn’t breaking in half, “We both have to put away things and solve our stuff, right?”

“Yeah, you’ve been procrastinating way longer than me” Daryl snorted, making her laugh.

“I’m not so good at following my own advice” she admitted. They moved closer and she wrapped her arms around his torso. Daryl put his hands on her waist and Beth leaned her forehead against him, “Don’t hook up with Rosita while I’m gone” she muttered. Daryl smiled and buried his face on her neck.

“Can’t promise anything” he replied, and this time they both bursted out laughing at the same time.

Beth wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, holding each other silently.

* * *

 

The car stopped and Beth got out. The porch’s lights turned on and she had to cover her eyes to try and see something.

“Bethy? Is that you?” she heard her dad’s voice. Beth nodded.

“Hi, daddy” she greeted him. Beth heard her mom gasp, and seconds later she was hugging her tightly, “Hi, mom” and melted into her arms, inhaling her home’s smell.

“You’re freezing, love” her mama scolded her fondly, “Come inside, I’ll make coffee”.

They climbed the staircase of the porch where Hershel waited for them. He hugged her as strongly as her mom.

“You didn’t tell us you were coming”.

“I wanted it to be a surprise” she explained as they went inside. She couldn’t help but look everywhere, feeling immediately at ease between those four walls covered in pictures, “but I arrived later than I expected” she added as she sat down in the kitchen table.

“Don’t you worry ‘bout that” her mom shook her hand, dismissing her, “Besides, we were watching TV”.

Beth smiled.

“So, Bethy, tell us” her dad sat down beside her, “How’s everything? You’re okay?”

She didn’t answer right away, and her parents stared at her, worried.

“Yeah”, she said, “I am now”.

* * *

 

The stacks of papers were dropped on the counter with a thud. The day had been hectic. Beth gave another form to one of the patients who were coming in and she hurried to help her partner.

“What’s with full moon nights that we have all these crazy people coming in?” Rachel murmured, giving her binders. Beth giggled.

“Werewolves transforming” she joked, and her partner laughed out loud.

“Talking about savage beasts, have you seen the guy with the knee injury?” and she pointed discretely at a boy sitting a few feet away, “He hasn’t looked away from you since he arrived. He’s handsome, right?”

Beth stopped a moment to watch him. Tall, strong, with dark blond hair. Definitely handsome. He was like the kind of guy Beth had always dated.

She shrugged.

“Not bad”.

“How demanding” Rachel teased her.

 

Hours later, when the light was starting to shine behind the buildings, Beth got in her car and drove back to the farm, feeling completely drained.

She had been working at the hospital for four months now, and she had been so busy she hadn’t unpacked her suitcase yet. A part of her knew that it was because it was like her only link to Newborn. She always felt this need to pack everything up again and come back, and she always backed up at the last minute.

 

Beth wondered if Daryl thought about her some time. They hadn’t spoken since she’d left. He had helped her pack her things, assured her he’d call her and he even kissed her before she got in her car, watching her leave. But then a month had gone by and Beth had been waiting by the phone long enough to realize that whatever they’d had was over. Daryl probably didn’t want to have a distance relationship with someone who may never get back. He had other things to talk about.

That’s what she told herself anyway. So she stood strong and got a job at the hospital and tried to get over her time in Newborn. She worked hard and made sure she could never get too distracted during the day, knowing that she’d be recalling everything in her head at night.

 

She drove slowly, enjoying the views while she got home. She loved arriving when it was dawning, the orange sky glowing while everything else was shadowy. However, Beth sighed in relief when she spotted the white farm at the end of the way. She was so exhausted she wouldn’t even shower before she collapsed into her bed.

 

It was then when she realized there was a pick-up truck parked in front of her house. She parked her own vehicle and got out, her heart hammering against her chest. She recognized the car registration immediately. Beth looked at the porch, and hurried inside the house.

“Hi? Mom? Dad?” she called them out, dropping her purse in the front door. She took off her jacket and started searching for them.

“We’re here, love” her mom said. Beth tried not to run towards the kitchen.

 

It seemed like it had been not even a day since the last time they saw each other, and still Beth couldn’t help but gasp when she found them: Daryl sitting at her kitchen table with her parents and having coffee.

Everyone turned around to look at her.

“We’re delighted to know your roommate _Rosita_ ” her daddy said, but there was no bite in his voice. Her mom held back a laugh. Daryl left the cup and looked at her, and Beth felt like she was unable to move. She just didn’t know what to say, her mind flooding with thoughts.

_What are you doing here?_

_Why did you take so long?_

_What does this mean?_

_Why didn’t you call?_

_Did you meet someone else?_

_I met someone else. I’ve met a thousand other guys._

_I’m great._

_I’m a mess and I hate you didn’t call me and I hate how much you can affect me._

_I’m great._

_I still love you._

_Do you?_

“Hi” he said, standing up and walking to her. Beth opened her mouth, ready to speak her mind.

_You owe me an explanation._

_Or a kiss._

_Or both._

_I’m never sure of what we are._

_But I know it now._

_You are here._

_With me._

“Hi” Beth answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what to say. A part of me thought I'd never end this story, and now here we are. I wanna apologize in advance for taking so long to update, but I also want to say thank you to all these wonderful people that left a comment or a kudos and supported me with every chapter. Also, huge thanks to every silent reader. I love you all the same.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> This is the last chapter, so why don't you leave a final goodbye comment?
> 
> See you soon,   
> x

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and please comment!


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